Gospel Story Finder

I was startled when my new ministering sister, Amy Jo, asked me for the names of all my children and then said, “I will pray for each of them and for you.” No one had ever offered to do that for me.
Every time we talk, she asks about my needs and those of my family and says she’ll pray for specific needs such as “I’ll pray for your son to find a job, and I’ll pray that you can be healed faster.” I have been extremely touched by this ongoing practice and feel the results of her efforts.

A few years ago, I was sitting on the fence between being active and inactive in the Church.
I spent one weekend with my friend Spencer, who was about to leave on his mission. He shared his conversion story with me and his desire to serve a mission. I felt the Spirit, and the words “Go on a mission” spoke to my soul. Never in my life had I had the desire to serve a mission. I pushed the feeling away and tried not to think about it.
The very next day, as Spencer and I were traveling, our driver began talking to us about her faith. As she shared, the same words came to my mind: “Go on a mission.” Once again, I buried the feeling.
As we sang the closing hymn at a fireside the following day, the Spirit poured over me and again prompted me to go on a mission. With tears uncontrollably streaming down my face, I thought, “Heavenly Father, if this is what you want, then I’ll do it, even though I don’t want to.” As soon as I made the decision, my desire and excitement to serve grew.
I started my mission papers two days later, and when I received my call, I was assigned to serve in the Philippines Quezon City North Mission. This experience always reminds me that if we have enough faith to follow the promptings of the Spirit, we will find happiness and peace.
Thomas A., South Australia, Australia

I was standing in the foyer waiting for church to begin when he walked in. He came right over to me, called me by name, and asked, “Do you know why I’m here?”
His pointed query took me off guard. Who is this guy? He looks familiar, but I sure don’t know him. And why should I know why he’s here? “No,” I answered, feeling a little awkward.
“I’m here because of you,” he said bluntly.
That got my attention. Though there was a vague familiarity, I couldn’t remember ever meeting him before. I had no idea who he was, yet he was standing there saying he was at church because of me.
My face must have revealed my incredulity. “We have the same P.E. class at college,” he explained. When I graduated from high school, I decided to go to a community college near my home just outside Los Angeles. He was in my gym class with about 100 other guys.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said.
Watching me? What does he mean by that?
“I noticed right off that you were different,” he continued. “You never swear. You don’t lose your temper. You don’t smoke. You never tell dirty jokes or even listen to them. You’re never involved in all the filthy talk that goes on. I really admire you. You’re exactly the kind of person I want to be,” he said. “So I started asking around about you. I found out your name, that you’re a Mormon, and that this is where you go to church. That’s why I’m here.”
There are probably a dozen words I could use to describe how I felt at that moment. I just tried to live the way I’d always been taught, and I probably hadn’t done that especially well. I was preparing to go on a mission, but I certainly wasn’t perfect. And he’d been watching me. That was the scary part. Had I done anything I should be ashamed of? I hoped not.
He stayed for church, and over the next few weeks he took the missionary lessons and was baptized. A year later, just before I left on my mission, he left on his. He served faithfully, returned, and was married in the temple. He is one of the happiest and most peaceful persons that I know.
I take no credit for his conversion. I was just a Mormon kid trying to live the standards I’d always been taught and believed were right. It wasn’t really me he was watching—it was those standards. But today, every time I read the Savior’s admonition to “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), I remember the day he walked up to me and said, “I’m here because of you.”

There is another aspect to Kent’s studies beyond the intellectual and aesthetic. Living with these magnificent birds has strengthened his testimony of his Creator. One winter day he took an atheist friend to a canyon where he knew there would be eagles. As they stood in the snow watching some 50 bald eagles soar above them, Kent looked at his open-mouthed friend and said quietly, “That didn’t just happen by accident.”
“Boy, I know it!” his friend said, his voice small with awe.
If anybody wants to know why eagles are worth saving, maybe that’s why.

Brother Garner coaches the Alta High soccer team, but a leg injury sidelined Dene for his entire freshman soccer season. As soon as the leg was healed, the two of them were back practicing field goals, kicking late into the night until the goal posts were nothing but silhouettes against the lingering brightness of the summer sky, or even ghostly white prongs in the darkness. All summer long they worked, kicking and kicking and kicking the five old balls the coach had loaned to them.
Dene improved steadily, and during his sophomore year he kicked a 46-yarder. He kicked eight field goals and 15 PATs to become the season high scorer with 39 points.
Dene refuses to take all the credit for this success himself. The blockers that protect him get a big share, and his center Tony Johnson and holder Chuck Cutler each get a whopping portion. In fact, Dene insisted that the New Era mention them by name. “I work with a good holder and a good center,” he says. “I tell them exactly how I want the ball, and that’s the way they give it to me. They’re both team players.”
The season was no sooner over than he got out his soccer boots and began getting ready for the Alta soccer season. Dene knew that he would get no special treatment because his father was the coach. He would be the first to be called into line if the team was playing badly. “He knows that if he’s not performing, he’ll come off the field,” Brother Garner says. The season ended in disappointment, with the team missing a berth in the post-season playoffs, but Dene still reveled in the plain joy of playing soccer, his first love, working his left-footed wizardry like an echo of Moses Wood himself. In 12 games that season he scored 8 goals and racked up 13 assists.
But the day he hung up his boots, it was back to field goal practice again. Dene isn’t satisfied to merely be on the team. He has set a high goal for himself—to kick a 65-yarder, which would merely be the longest field goal ever kicked in a football game. To reach that goal he knows he must work long, hard hours. In addition to weight training and calisthenics, he must kick field goals five or six nights a week.
In a typical practice session Dene first stretches well to avoid injury. Then he starts out with from five to thirty PATs. He moves back five yards at a time, kicking from the middle of the field and both hash marks. He always pauses for a few kicks at the 37-yard hash marks in honor of the Bingham victory. He usually winds up the practice with some 50-yarders, having put up some 50 to 75 kicks.
Brother Garner is a hawk-eyed analyst of his son’s field goal kicking technique. “If he’s kicking the ball everywhere but where it should be, I’ll say, ‘You’re losing your style,’” Brother Garner explains. “I’ll say, ‘You’re trying to put too much into the kick and losing your style because of it,’ or ‘You’re dropping your shoulder or leaning too far over the ball.’ He accepts my advice. We’ve never had any bother.
“At first he had the bad habit of taking his eye off the ball. He wanted to see it go over the posts. That’s not your privilege when you’re a kicker. Your job is to keep your eye on the ball, clear the ball, and follow through. If you start lifting your head, you’re going to miskick the ball.
“When you’re attempting a goal, you haven’t time to think of the applause you’re going to get afterwards but must concentrate on the job at hand. If you’re thinking about the praise you’re going to get afterward, you’ll miss the kick and get nothing.” Dene has taken this advice to heart. When kicking, he is a study in concentration, even though he knows that several thousand pounds of armored muscle and bone are coming his way with very hostile intent.
It’s nice having one whole coach to yourself, especially if he’s your dad. It provides services you couldn’t expect from ordinary coaches. For example, Dene was really shaken when he had a kick blocked in one game. Brother Garner took him back out on the field after the game, while the stands were still emptying, and had him kick ball after ball from the same spot. He hit 48 before he missed one. Brother Garner then explained that it wasn’t his fault if a kick was blocked occasionally, and Dene went away with his confidence restored.
But Brother Garner didn’t leave it at that. He did something positive to help overcome the problem. He built a ten-foot-high barrier for Dene to kick over. As a result, Dene has learned to chip PATs or short field goals so high that Goliath would have a hard time blocking them.
Spending so many hours together in practice and games has strengthened the bonds between Dene and his father. “There are many things in life you can talk about on the football field a lot easier than in a father’s interview,” Brother Garner says. Of course, he has the father’s interview with all his children as well. “Besides becoming good at a game, Dene is learning gospel principles as we talk,” Brother Garner continues. “We communicate better and we’re overcoming barriers.”
Dene has two sets of proud grandparents in England who keep scrapbooks of his achievements and are always eager for news of his progress. His Grandfather and Grandmother Wood recently came to the states for a long vacation. They were able to see Dene play both football and soccer, and Dene was able to hear some stories of the old days again.
His granddad is both a cheerleader and a critic. “I’ve always believed in telling the truth,” he says. “When he deserves it, I praise him, and when he deserves it, I kick him in the pants.” It is a spring afternoon and Dene, his mother and father and grandmother and grandfather are sitting out on the front lawn. His grandfather smiles. “Wasn’t that a marvelous goal last night?” he asks. “Sometimes I tell him that he’s rubbish, but when he scores a goal like that, what more can you say? I’m proud of him, of course. He likes sports, and to me you can’t go wrong that way. A bit of sport and you’re on the right road. My daughter always writes to us in England and gives us an account of what he’s doing, and I share it with everybody. It gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure to see him excel.” He looks Dene over appraisingly and then adds, “He’s a fine looking lad, isn’t he?”
Dene goes into the house and proudly comes out with a treasured championship medal from his grandfather’s soccer days. As first grandson, he has received it as a birthright.
“I’ve always been proud of him,” his Grandmother Wood says. “He was our first grandson, and with me having three girls, it was really something that was delightful to have someone to carry on grandpa’s participation in sports. When Dene turned out to enjoy playing football, well of course it was just the thing. I knew grandpa would be delighted, which of course he was. I think sports give young men a good backing for life, a wider scope of give and take. If you’re a sportsman, you can both give it and take it, can’t you? And a team sport teaches you to play as a team and not be selfish. I’m proud of all my grandchildren.”
The talk turns to soccer strategy. Brother Garner and Grandfather Wood are both masters in the art. Both can “read” a soccer game like a book, and their advice to young soccer players is so much alike that it seems to be one person speaking. “If you want to play soccer, you’ve got to keep your eye on the ball and control it. If you bring it down in good control, you can spray your passes wherever you like. There should be none of this long kicking. You’ve got to control the ball. The moment you take your eye off the ball is the moment you lose it. You can watch the ball and still see your own foot and your opponent as well. And remember, it doesn’t matter who scores as long as the ball is in the net. A pass is entirely better than somebody blazing over the top of the net because he doesn’t have an angle to shoot at. If you pass to a man who scores a goal, that’s just as good as scoring yourself. When a team scores a goal, equal praise is due to every player—to the goalkeeper who pushed it out at just the right time, to the fullback who moved it down to the halfback, to the halfback who pushed it to the wing, to the wing who crossed it to the forward, and to the forward who just had to stick his foot out and pop it in. Young players must learn to hit the open man and then move to an open space for a return pass. A good player won’t follow the ball. He’ll see the players setting up and then go to where the ball is going to be, not where it is.”
Then there was talk of the family in England, where sport is also a family affair. Both the Garner and Wood sides of the family are prospering it seems. Both have sent young men to the continent to represent Yorkshire in rugby.
Finally, Dene’s mother Anne, as mothers will, offers some insight into another side of his character. “He’s good with other kids,” she says. “He gets along with everybody. He’s so generous and kind natured. At Christmas he spent all the money he had earned at his job, after tithing, for presents for the family—things he knew we needed. Giving seems to give him more pleasure than anything else. When he was just a little boy, if somebody gave him a sweet, he always asked for another one for his sister Lesa. He likes to listen and doesn’t say very much. He doesn’t show his emotions, but he feels things very deeply. I’m very proud of him. The first time he blessed the sacrament, it was such a special time. I wanted to run down and hug him and kiss him just like he was still my baby, but I realize that he’s grown into a young man.”
Indeed he has, and his two little brothers aren’t far behind him. Craig, 10, plays a fine center half in recreational league soccer and can already kick short field goals with deadly accuracy on the football field. Matthew, 7, is not far behind. Meanwhile, Dene’s sister Lesa, 15, plays on the ward softball team and on the volleyball team that won the stake championship, as well as being a high school cheerleader. Mom isn’t left out either. With her husband she coaches the recreational league team that Craig plays on and has a fine grasp of soccer strategy.
Of course, the family realizes that goals on the sports field are not the only goals that count. Dene serves as priests quorum secretary and is a few merit badges away from his Eagle Scout award. He is a member of a very Mormon family.
“I’m glad I’ve got the Church,” Dene says simply, “and I’m very proud of my ancestors. All my life I’ve listened to stories about their accomplishments, and I want to make them proud of me too. I don’t ever want to disappoint them.” It has been 17 years since a proud young father in Yorkshire blessed his little son to walk tall, but the promise is bearing fruit because of a proud heritage and because that father gave more than a blessing. He gave an example.

Later, I offered to assist two members of a family that lived nearby who were struggling. They accepted my help and became part of my household.
I didn’t have the financial means, however, to support us. So I had to work harder than ever, supporting three people instead of one. It was a big lifestyle change.
To navigate that change, I knew I needed to follow my mother’s words and hold tight to the iron rod. Holding on to the iron rod includes remembering the Savior and studying the word of God. I needed to set a good example, communicate more with God, and study the scriptures every day. So, we started studying the scriptures together. Soon, the Spirit became abundant in our home.
The most fulfilling and wonderful times of my life have come from holding to the iron rod. I have also learned that “as you hold on to the iron rod, you will walk hand in hand with Jesus Christ. He will be guiding you, and He will be teaching you.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were blessed to have hospice care for my husband, Claude, in our home. There, our children and I lovingly assisted in his care until he quietly slipped away to our heavenly home.
Earlier, Claude and I had prayed about whether to convert our screened-in patio into a hospice room, where we could fit everything he would need to feel comfortable. We received confirmation that we should proceed.
To remodel the patio, several workers needed access to our home. Fortunately, the patio had a back door, so the workers could go in and out without having to enter our home’s main living quarters. That was a great blessing during COVID-19 restrictions.
After Claude’s room was completed, nurses came daily. They were kind, loving, and knowledgeable about what we needed to do to keep Claude comfortable.
When I joined the Church, I was taught that every member of the Church is a missionary.1 Because I love sharing the gospel, I ordered three cases of the Book of Mormon, 24 books in each case. I vowed to give a book to every person who entered our home.
I marked important sections of each book with a business card I designed that featured a photo I took of the Salt Lake Temple. I also pasted my testimony onto the blank page at the front of each book. Then, before giving a book to a worker or a nurse, I explained to them what the Book of Mormon is.
I was pleasantly surprised by their reactions. Only one person refused to accept a book. Everyone else was interested in hearing about it. Some thanked me profusely, saying that they knew about the Book of Mormon and wanted one. Several people were so happy that they even hugged me.
I am convinced that this happened because every time I opened my mouth to speak about the Book of Mormon, the Holy Ghost was with me. I am confident that the workers and nurses could feel the Spirit. I gave away all 72 books, and I recently placed an order for 24 more.

I received a letter from a missionary in California. He was there with his wife and he wrote this: “There have been so many Mormon boys here in uniform, and they have been such fine, outstanding young fellows that they have turned the attitude of the people of this town toward the Mormon Church.”
Now you see they were uncommon boys. Then he told this specific story. He said that one of the women’s clubs was putting on a luncheon at the hotel. The lady in charge had an extra plate placed at the table, and she said, “When the next soldier comes along, we will invite him to occupy this place at the table.” Well, he happened to be a Mormon boy and he didn’t hide his light under a bushel. Like Jesus said, we should let our light so shine that the world, seeing our good works, will glorify our Father in Heaven. (See Matt. 5:16.)
When they passed the coffee around, he didn’t touch the coffee. You see how easy it would have been for the boy to say, “Oh, shucks, Mother isn’t here. Father isn’t here. My bishop isn’t here. I am the only man with all of these women. A little cup of coffee won’t hurt me.”
But he had to show forth the praises of the Lord who had called him out of darkness into the marvelous light, and he wouldn’t touch it. They offered to get him tea and he didn’t want that. Then they wanted to know all about him. That opened the door so he could tell them about how he was raised. And then when they were through eating, they lighted their cigarettes and passed them around. Of course, the young soldier refused. Well, anyway, right there one of those women decided, “If the Mormon elders ever call at my home, I will let them in. I want to know more about a people who can raise a boy like that boy who sat at our table today.” When the missionary wrote me about this lady, she was a very earnest investigator.

Think again. The boys in the teachers quorum of the Sandy, Utah, Willow Creek First Ward did, and their quorum hasn’t been the same since.
Quorum members seem to be friendlier to each other than before. Ward members see the boys just a bit differently. And occasionally you might catch one of them humming a spiritual tune in the halls at school. But with all those changes, some things have stayed the same. These boys are a perfectly typical group of teachers who like to do all the things teachers quorums do.
“We like to camp and play basketball and ski together,” says Michael Olsen, “but those things aren’t centered solely on the Spirit. Singing together is a much different experience. It brings us together in a way that other kinds of activities just can’t.”
The coming together that Michael describes is the very thing the teachers quorum presidency were looking for when they decided to try this experiment. But they weren’t sure it would work. After all, they were going to have to ask their fellow teachers to give up an hour on Sunday to come and … sing.
“We wanted to do something that would serve the ward and also be good for the quorum,” says Dave Liljenquist, a former member of the teachers quorum presidency. “When the bishopric and our leaders introduced this idea, we actually laughed. But we said we’d give it a try.”
And so a handful of the boys started to go to choir practice.
Cameron wasn’t the only teacher who discovered how much he liked the choir. All the other boys that were going were having fun, too. Pretty soon, their friends in the quorum decided to find out what was so great about the choir.
It wasn’t long before the teachers quorum was filling half the choir seats.
“At first, I felt some pressure to go to choir because my friends were going,” says Ben Young. “But after the first time I was going because I wanted to. Singing gives us more time together with our friends.”
But don’t misunderstand. “Choir practice” isn’t code for time to talk or horse around. These boys are serious about the choir. When they’re in choir practice, they’re either singing or quietly listening to the instructions given by the choir director.
And speaking of the choir director, Sister Naomi Bonney, what does she have to say about all of this?
“We have some sons singing in the choir with their mothers. I think that’s brought a nice feeling to the choir,” she says. “These young men are learning something valuable they will be able to use the rest of their lives.”
“At school, sometimes I’ll think of the words to a song,” says Mark Garbett. “You keep them with you, and they have good messages.”
Joey Ulrich says it wasn’t too hard to learn to read music, a skill he mastered pretty quickly even though he’d never done it before he joined the choir. And Paul Garbett says that being in the choir reminds him that, even though he could be doing other things on a Sunday afternoon, choir practice is a great place for him to spend time.
“Sunday is a day of worship, not just a day of rest,” says Paul. “Singing in the choir is another way to worship, just like praying or reading scriptures.”
But it’s probably Michael who sums up the choir’s appeal the best: “You know, sometimes you’re singing about something and you learn something new. And other times, when you’re singing about God, you realize that you know it’s true, that He’s real and that we believe in Him. It invites the Spirit. It makes you feel good.”

Reading the scriptures is hard for Shellee because of the vocabulary. She doesn’t recognize words from having heard them in conversation; she has to learn each word individually by looking it up. Words like nevertheless are hard enough to understand when you’ve heard other people use them. How is a deaf person to understand it without help?
Shellee’s seminary teacher is helping to solve this problem with drawings. She has her students draw pictures in their scriptures that go along with the stories so they can have a better idea of what is going on. “It helps a lot,” Shellee says.

When I was nine, I had friends who used to swear a lot. I thought if they were doing it, maybe I could too. I talked to my parents, and they said it wasn’t the right thing to do. Then I prayed to Heavenly Father and felt that it wasn’t right to swear.
It was one thing to not swear, but I decided to ask my friends to stop as well. It was a little bit hard to stand up to my friends, especially the ones I didn’t know well. Most of my friends accepted my wish. But others said, “This is the way I talk, so if you have a problem with it, I can stop hanging out with you.” That was hard at first, but then I realized they weren’t my true friends.
Sometimes if you hang out with people, you eventually get used to the way they talk or act and you can forget what’s right or wrong. Making the right decision when I was nine has helped me make other good decisions since then. It taught me that I could make good decisions by talking to my parents and praying. I can know what I need to do.
Even though I knew my parents’ opinion was right, I decided to pray as well to be sure about what I was doing, especially when it came to not hanging out with some of my friends. No matter how old we are, Heavenly Father is always there for us. I know I can rely on Him to tell me what I need to do.

I am very grateful to be able to read the New Era. I went to pick up my mail at the mission home today and found out that there wasn’t any mail for me. It’s been over a month since I have had a letter from home, but I was happy to see that my March New Era had arrived. I started reading it while walking down the street, and I walked into a wire that anchored a telephone pole! I read the magazine that day, and before nighttime I had read it from cover to cover. I always used to skip a few articles that didn’t seem interesting, but this time I read every article, and they were all interesting.
Elder Joseph Richard Wright, Jr.Philippines Manila Mission

The American Young Men and Young Women living in Bonn, Germany, hosted a night of Halloween activities for their German, Spanish, French, English, and Filipino friends.
“We gave a workshop called ‘How to Carve a Jack-o’-lantern,’” says Terri Lutz, a Laurel who helped to plan the activity.
Since carving pumpkins is an American tradition, most of the youth had never even heard of it, much less done it.
“As they plunged their hands inside the pumpkin to scoop the ‘goop’ out, you could tell that some of them were questioning this strange American tradition,” says Terri.
After the pumpkins were carved and everyone had a chance to clean up, they ate—what else?—pumpkin cookies and pumpkin bread!
The activity helped bring the youth closer together, says Terri. “We were able to overcome the language barrier and enjoy one another’s company.”

As one of 15 prophets, seers, and revelators sustained yesterday by our worldwide Church, I want to share with you one of my experiences sustaining the prophet and embracing his words. It was for me much like the prophet Jacob, who recounted, “I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word.”

Last October my wife, Melanie, and I were in Bangkok, Thailand, as I was preparing to dedicate what would be the Church’s 185th temple. For me, the assignment was both surreal and humbling. This was the first temple on the Southeast Asia peninsula. It was masterfully designed—a six-story, nine-spired structure, “fitly framed” to be a house of the Lord. For months I had contemplated the dedication. What had settled in my soul and mind was that the country and the temple had been cradled in the arms of prophets and apostles. President Thomas S. Monson had announced the temple and President Nelson the dedication.

I had prepared the dedicatory prayer months earlier. Those sacred words had been translated into 12 languages. We were ready. Or so I thought.

The night before the dedication, I was awakened from my sleep with an unsettled, urgent feeling about the dedicatory prayer. I tried to set aside the prompting, thinking the prayer was in place. But the Spirit would not leave me alone. I sensed certain words were missing, and by divine design they came to me in revelation, and I inserted these words in the prayer near the end: “May we think celestial, letting Thy Spirit prevail in our lives, and strive to be peacemakers always.” The Lord was reminding me to heed the words of our living prophet: “Think celestial,” “let the Spirit prevail,” “strive to be peacemakers.” Words of the prophet matter to the Lord and to us.

President Hinckley’s grandfather, Ira Nathanial Hinckley, lost his parents and was sent from Michigan to Springfield, Illinois, to live with his grandparents. As a teenager he walked to Nauvoo, Illinois, and met the Prophet Joseph Smith.
He traveled westward with the pioneers. During the U.S. Civil War he volunteered for service in the Union army guarding the transcontinental telegraph line. Later he was sent by Brigham Young to Cove Creek, Utah, where he built the fort that stands today.
On the trek west, Ira Hinckley stayed back for one season to plow the prairies and plant grain that he would not harvest. The harvest belonged to those who came afterward. The forebearers of Brother and Sister Hinckley planted fields of faith for those who followed them.

In June 1972, Sister Nelson and I decided to take our family on a rafting trip down the Colorado River. We thought that it would be fun to be together for a week, and we were told that the water level was low, so we believed that it would be safe. We had no idea how dangerous the trip would turn out to be!
Our youngest child was only four months old then, so we left him with relatives and went with our nine daughters and one son-in-law. On the second day of the trip, as we started to go over what were called the Horn Creek rapids, we suddenly saw a drop ahead that seemed to be the depth of a several-story building. These precious people in my family were about to drop down a waterfall in a small rubber raft, and I was frightened! By instinct I let go of the rope in the raft and protectively put one arm round my wife and the other around our youngest daughter, Marjorie, who was not quite seven years old.
I was sitting in the back of the raft, and as we hit the rapids, I was thrown into the air. I landed in the water, and each time I tried to reach the surface, I found myself trapped underneath the raft. I was tossed about by the water like an egg in an eggbeater, and I had no air and nearly drowned. My family couldn’t see me, but I could hear them shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! Where’s Daddy?”
I finally came to the surface, and my family was able to drag me, exhausted, out of the water. They were relieved to see me—and I was certainly glad to see them!
The next several days we went over rapids that were much more calm. Then, toward the end of the trip, we approached rapids that were much more difficult than any we had previously gone through.
We decided to have a family council, so we stopped the raft by the side of the river. We knew we had to have a plan if we were going to live through this experience. I was so worried about the safety of my family that if there had been a way to end the trip right then, I would have done it. But there was no other way to get to our destination or to return to where we started. I said to my family, “The only way we can make it through these rapids is to understand that the raft will make it through no matter what, because it will float. So if we hold on to the rope on the raft with all our strength, we will make it through the rapids. Even if the raft flips over, we will make it.”
I turned to my littlest daughter. “Marjorie,” I told her, “you will need to hold on to your daddy. Get behind me and put your arms around me and hold on tight!”
We went through the terrifying experience of going down those steep, rough rapids where, as we later learned, people had lost their lives in the past—and we made it.

Illustrations by Shauna Mooney Kawasaki
What’s wrong, Sarah?
I’m not smart.
Who’s been teasing you?
It doesn’t matter, because it’s true—I’m not smart. I’m no good at math or English or anything else.
Heavenly Father, please help me know what to say.
Sarah, my dad read a scripture to my family last night. It says, “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.”*
So?
So you may not be the top student at math or English, but you’re full of light and truth. It shines from your face. Sarah Mercer, you are intelligent!
You’re a child of God, and His glory is in you.
If you say so.
I do say so.

Journey with Joseph started out as a single song. It was written by Kurt Metzger, a member of the ward, to be sung by the youth. The song was written as a tribute to the Prophet, titled “Great Shall Be the Memory of Your Name,” and was sung at a youth conference. End of story.

Well, not exactly. The youth sang it again in a church meeting a few weeks later, and the bishop soon called Brother Metzger to write an entire presentation. And so Brother Metzger got to work. As the weeks flew by, ward members busily sewed costumes, painted scenery, and choreographed dances. The youth spent hours and hours learning lyrics by heart, then moving on to the next song, which was sometimes still in various stages of composition as they learned it. For some people, the idea of getting a full-length presentation written and produced in six months would seem crazy. But the youth had the energy, the leaders had the creativity, and they all had the dedication to make it work.

It wasn’t easy, but Jon Kirkham, who plays the part of Hyrum Smith in the presentation, says that sometimes the things that require the most sacrifice also become the most valuable.

“I’m so busy with school and everything that lately things have just been nuts. Last week I came home from my job and discovered neither of the cars were home, so I had to ride my bike to the church. It’s about half an hour by bike, but once I got there I didn’t care how tired I was. It’s just incredible being there with everyone and learning about the Prophet and the Church,” says Jon.

Seventeen-year-old Mindy Coon plays Lucy Mack Smith. “I tried to really understand how much love Joseph’s mother had for him,” she says. “She was one of the first people to recognize that what Joseph was saying was true. Learning about her so that I could portray her was really a humbling experience.”

Eighteen-year-old Nate Brian, who plays Joseph Smith, also feels that he has gained insight from being in the production. “Being able to, in a very small way, live the life of Joseph Smith has been so incredible. I’ve realized so many things, and it strengthens me to know that even though we’re human, if we live righteously, we can achieve great things.”

And it goes on and on. Through the long hours of practice and the stress of learning new things rapidly, the youth also come to understand much better what the early Saints went through to get the Church and its programs up and running. It’s all about sacrifice, loving others as yourself, enduring heartache and illness, and having enough faith in the Lord to carry you through.

But it isn’t just about hardship; it is also about living the gospel. It is about the happiness and blessings that come as a result of obedience. And it is about sharing the gospel message with others. Lots of things have changed for missionaries since Joseph Smith was a prophet—they ride bikes instead of buggies, and they don’t wear all that cumbersome clothing. But no matter what they wear or where they are, their message has remained the same. And, if you know where to look, you just might find member missionaries who are so excited about the gospel, they’ll even sing about it.

After my friend Buddy was in a car accident, I didn’t see him for a while. I guess he didn’t want to see his friends because he had some scars on his face.
One day I decided to call him on the phone. He said if I saw him I wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore. “I’m ugly,” he said, and I could tell he was crying.
Before the car accident, Buddy had always been happy and fun to be around. Now he was sad and wanted to be alone.
Buddy’s birthday was coming up. He didn’t want a party. He didn’t want anybody to see him or stare at him. Mom told me that Buddy and his family prayed that Heavenly Father would help him to feel different about himself. He knew he was a child of God and that his family loved him, but he still didn’t want to see his friends.
Before I went to visit Buddy, I asked Heavenly Father how I could help my friend. On my way out of my bedroom I saw my rock collection on the shelf. Something told me to give Buddy the big quartz rock. The rock didn’t look like much on the outside, but it had bright crystals inside.
I wrapped the rock in blue paper and headed to Buddy’s house. He didn’t want to see me at first, but he finally told his mom it was OK. When I went in his room, he was wearing a bandana to cover part of his face. I handed Buddy his birthday gift. When he opened it, he just stared at the rock.
“Uh, thanks,” he said.
“It’s better than it looks,” I said. “Grab your dad’s hammer, and come outside with me.”
We went into Buddy’s backyard. I put the rock on the ground and hit it with the hammer. It broke open, and Buddy’s eyes widened with surprise. “Wow, cool!” he exclaimed as he saw the crystals inside glinting in the sun.
Then I realized why I had been prompted to give Buddy the rock. “It’s just like you,” I said. “People who know you don’t care what you look like on the outside. What’s important is your heart.”
Buddy didn’t say anything as he gazed at the quartz, but I could tell he was smiling under the bandana.
Buddy decided to have a birthday party with his friends, and he didn’t wear the bandana over his face. He was his old self again. He still had scars, but he didn’t mind and neither did we. We knew what was inside, and that’s what was important.

It seemed perfectly normal when Karen Monahan grabbed the hero’s arm. Then, right on cue, he began his solo performance. But instead of singing the words, he was signing them, telling his part of the story through deaf sign language. No one in the audience knew that Karen had squeezed firmly on Scott’s arm to let him know when to begin. No one needed to know. He performed his actions smoothly, as the other actors had throughout the show, without saying a word.
Then the curtains rushed together, but no one on stage spoke. When the curtains opened again, the cast bowed politely. Although the audience thundered its applause, 30 of the 45 performers couldn’t hear it because they are deaf. But they had communicated so effectively with the audience that nearly everyone watching cheered when the awards were announced. The Los Angeles Ward for the Deaf had won the Los Angeles California Stake roadshow competition, with awards for best acting, best costumes and set, best script, and of course, outstanding roadshow of the year.
It was the culmination of months of effort that had begun when the stake president, Rodney H. Brady, sent a letter inviting the ward to participate in the annual contest for the first time. Initially, the challenge seemed insurmountable. “I had my doubts about how good it would be,” Wayne Bennett, a counselor in the bishopric said, speaking in Ameslan (American Sign Language, a means of communication employed by many deaf people). “But a few months of practice made of lot of difference. When I saw the roadshow in performance, I said, ‘Hey, that’s no roadshow; that’s a miracle!’”
The audience seemed to agree. Carol Mears, a professional comedy sketch writer, said she was “thrilled. I honestly forgot it was being done by the deaf.” Other performers, sometimes from other ward’s roadshows, sometimes children of ward members, provided voices to narrate the story. They spoke through microphones in the orchestra pit and were unseen by the audience. But their narration helped those who could hear to follow the actions of the deaf actors and actresses on stage.
The show, entitled “Under the Apple Tree,” adhered closely to the stake theme, “Once upon an Apple Tree,” and followed the trials of Red Delicious, an apple tree torn from his home by a tornado. He was soon joined by Yellow Delicious, another uproot in search of a place she could call her own. The two castaways discovered a new orchard presided over by Mother Apple, and finally felt confident to sink their roots into the community. Red Delicious eventually saved his fellow trees from a nefarious attack by bugs and aphids (including two members of the bishopric), and the apple trees lived happily ever after.
One of the highlights of the production was the “ABC Song,” during which the Apple Cuties taught audience members the manual alphabet. Another well-remembered scene found Mother Apple unable to get the attention of Red and Yellow Delicious, so she threw an apple at them and complained, “They must be deaf.” The joke appeared to put the audience at ease as they realized the deaf knew how to laugh at themselves.
Making the roadshow a success was not an easy task. There were many unusual problems. For example, when 23-year-old director Dave McKay began thinking about writing a script, he encountered the difficulty of writing one that would never be spoken. “We wrote it with our hands,” he said. Once a skeletal plot outline was chosen, directors and cast members worked together from improvised possibilities to a finalized sequence of actions. Long after rehearsals had begun, voice director Kareena Heath decided on words to be read by the unseen voices in the orchestra pit.
Another difficulty was synchronization of music and action. The entr’acte, for example, was an interpretive dance, and the dancers were required to perform to music they could not hear. Brother McKay solved the problem by casting one hearing dancer, who was responsible to keep the others in time with the beat. Once again, this was accomplished by means of hidden signals undetectable to the audience. Scott Duge (Red Delicious) and Birdie Herrick (Mother Apple) were kept on cue by Karen, a hearing interpreter for the deaf who took the role of Yellow Delicious. In other sections, actors and dancers maintained correct timing by memorizing counts and order of appearance.
Staging had to be carefully arranged so that actors could not only be seen, but also so that their hand signals were clearly visible at all times.
And, of course, butterflies in the stomach aren’t limited only to those who hear. Bill Andrews, who played Washington, the oldest of Mother Apple’s children, explained that stage fright manifested itself in an unusual way. “You could literally say we had a case of arthritis,” he said. “Our fingers were frozen. When hearing people get scared, their voices shake, but in our case, it’s our hands. They stiffen up and we can’t make the signs.”
Birdie was supposed to keep everyone backstage quiet. “But the deaf signed to each other anyway,” she remembered, smiling. “I told them to cut it out, because their hands would crack and make noise.”
The Los Angeles Ward for the Deaf is a unique organization. Those in the ward are either deaf themselves or members of a family in which someone is deaf. Although it is under jurisdiction of the Los Angeles California Stake, its members come from a broad geographical area. But the roadshow brought them all together.
Homer Thexton explained how participation in the event strengthened family unity. He is deaf, his wife is hard of hearing, and his children hear normally, yet all participated. “It helped our family,” he explained. “There was more cooperation and communication at home. We really taught and helped each other in our parts.”
That type of reaction extended throughout the stake. For example, members of the University of Southern California Branch roadshow cast (which, incidentally, placed second in the competition) stayed behind after their own performance long enough to provide the voices for the deaf show. Noting that support, President Brady said he felt the roadshow experience had unified the entire stake. Since the performance, a variety of activities have helped to bring members of the ward for the deaf and other wards in the stake into closer contact on a more regular basis. (See FYI for Feb. 1978 and May 1978.)
The roadshow is over. But excitement and pride remain. Already ward members are talking about future productions and looking forward to another roadshow next year.
Editor’s Note: The Los Angeles Ward for the Deaf was recently divided to form two new wards, the San Fernando Valley Ward for the Deaf in the Los Angeles California Chatsworth Stake, and the Torrance North Ward for the Deaf, located in the Torrance California North Stake. The Fullerton Branch for the Deaf of the Fullerton California Stake was created in 1971, and continues to serve the needs of the deaf in that area.