Gospel Story Finder

Matthew is a very good example of Christlike love. He is very loving to his family, and he is a good example to the teachers and other students in his kindergarten class. His teacher says that he has no enemies, and he sticks up for others if he thinks that they are unfairly treated. He isn’t afraid to stand up for the right. Last year when terrorists attacked, Matthew raised his hand and said, “We need to remember that they have babies, too. Just because some of them do something bad to us doesn’t mean that we need to do something bad back.”

Sometimes living the principles of the gospel presents us with some challenges. During World War II, I enlisted in the Navy immediately out of high school and entered boot camp in San Diego. I shall never forget the first night in the barracks. We were all dressed in our standard white skivvies, and I ended up with the top half of a two-man bunk. I remember lying there after the lights were turned off and trying to decide how I was going to say my prayer. There was a little confusion around the area, and I didn’t want to flaunt my religion, but I also thought I might as well establish early that I was not ashamed to pray. So after a few minutes when the confusion subsided, I knelt quietly on top of my bunk and began to pray. I had just started when a large, boisterous fellow I’d met from northern Idaho came roaring down the aisle and in a loud voice yelled, “Hey, what are you doing, Clarke?” At the same time he whopped me across the backside and just about knocked me off the bunk. It’s quite an experience to kneel in the dark about five feet off the ground and suddenly find yourself flying through space! I managed to grab the rail and stay on top, but my nerves took an awful jolt. I didn’t say anything but continued my prayer. When I finished, my big neighbor fervently apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again. We talked good-naturedly for a few minutes, then went to sleep.
That was the end of my problem. The next night I followed the same basic routine, but this time my friend took it upon himself to see that I had no interference. I heard him say, “All right, you guys, knock it off. Clarke’s saying his prayers.”

After Paulo came up out of the baptismal font, he and Dad got dressed in dry clothes. Then Dad and Grandpa and the bishop laid their hands on his head and confirmed him. Now he was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I feel so great,” Paulo said. He touched his heart. “In here.”
Mom hugged him tight. “That’s because you received the gift of the Holy Ghost when you were confirmed.”
Paulo nodded. He didn’t want to do anything to make that great feeling go away. He wanted to always follow Jesus.
But the very next day, his little brother Carlo broke Paulo’s toy plane. Paulo had saved up for months to buy it!
“Look what you did!” Paulo yelled. “Why can’t you leave my stuff alone?”
“I’m sorry,” Carlo said. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Maybe we can fix it.”
“It won’t be the same!”
Carlo ran out of the room crying.
Paulo sighed. He wished he hadn’t gotten so mad. Hadn’t he promised when he was baptized that he would always follow Jesus? He knew Jesus would have been kind.
“I promised I would try to be like Jesus,” he told Mom, his voice shaking. “But I’ve already messed up! How do I get back that good feeling from my baptism?”
Mom hugged him tight. “We all mess up. But Jesus gave us a way to have the Holy Ghost with us again after we do something wrong.”
Paulo could guess what she was going to say. “You mean repentance, right? I have to ask for forgiveness.”
Mom nodded. “And when you take the sacrament, you’ll renew the promise you made to follow Jesus. Then you’ll be just as clean as you were right after you were baptized and confirmed.”
Paulo went to find Carlo. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said. “Let’s fix the plane together.”
Carlo smiled, and Paulo felt like he had done what Jesus would do. When he said his prayer that night, he asked Heavenly Father to forgive him and to help him be nicer to Carlo. A warm feeling filled his heart.
That Sunday at church, Paulo paid extra attention to the sacrament prayers. He listened carefully to the words and remembered how he’d repented that week. As he took the bread and water, he felt Heavenly Father’s love for him. And it was such a great feeling!

Renee was born in Haiti, a small country on an island in the Caribbean Sea. When she was eight years old, she and her mother moved to Utah to be closer to Renee’s aunts, uncles, and cousins.
After the move, Renee’s family and friends told her and her mother about the gospel. Soon the missionaries started teaching them.
At first, Renee wasn’t sure that she wanted to be baptized. Then one day the missionaries read something special from the Book of Mormon—words of the prophet Nephi. He said that baptism is like a gate to a path that leads to Heavenly Father. He also talked about the blessings of the gift of the Holy Ghost that come after baptism.
Renee felt a warm, happy feeling in her heart. She knew that she wanted to return to Heavenly Father. And she wanted the gift of the Holy Ghost. She thought that the Holy Ghost would be a good friend and companion to help her throughout her life. She and her mother were soon baptized.

One Sunday morning Ho-jik Kim was teaching a Sunday School class when the president of Korea, Syngman Rhee, sent his secretary to get him. Dr. Kim was the vice minister of education at the time, and President Rhee wanted to discuss an important matter with him.

Arriving at the LDS meetinghouse, the secretary found Dr. Kim in Sunday School and urged him to go at once to see the president. Brother Kim said he could not leave until he had taught his Sunday School lesson.

Afterward, when Brother Kim met with the president, he was criticized for being late. Dr. Kim explained to the president the importance of his calling as a Sunday School teacher. President Rhee, realizing how much the Church meant to Dr. Kim, patted him on the shoulder and said, “Chalhaeso!” (You have done well!)

Rambo, who adopted her unique English name several years ago, also credits her sister’s influence in her own conversion. “When I was younger, I began going to church with Belle each Sunday, even though I hadn’t been baptized,” she recalls, “but I wouldn’t take the sacrament.”
This is where the story takes an ironic twist.
“A lot of members of the ward would look at me and think I was a member,” she continues. “They would ask me to be a fellowshipper for the missionaries’ investigators, even though I was still an investigator myself. As I got older, my testimony began to develop, and I learned more about the Church.”
When Rambo was finally baptized in 1990, she joined Belle in teaching gospel principles to their other sisters, Mandy, May, Angela, and Agnes, as well as to Simon. She also continued “officially” fellowshipping other investigators at church each Sunday. “When I was a kid, I liked to play and have fun. But when I got older, I received a testimony—a true testimony —and I wanted to share it,” Rambo says.
One of the first people Rambo wanted to share the gospel with was her sister Agnes. She invited Agnes to church.

Elder Robert D. Hales
(95) Elder Hales’s grandson interrupts his reading the newspaper to ask, “Are you in there?”

Two years passed, and changing family circumstances forced me into a profound sadness. My father had left Poland in search of work so our family was divided. I felt desperate, searching for God. My prayers became more sincere, pleading with Heavenly Father to help me find His presence.

One day my mother told me, “Some person by the name of Garling asked for you. I told him to call back next week.” She knew that it was a missionary and wasn’t interested in the message, so she didn’t feel it necessary to respond quickly.

That Friday night I again heard knocking at the door. This time I gave the emissaries a sincere welcome and a smile. “You are welcome in my home, but you need to know I will never become a Mormon,” I told them.

These elders taught me anyway—every Friday afternoon for six months. Loads of my mom’s cookies and thousands of questions later, all my deepest questions began to be answered. It seemed like every time the missionaries visited, another piece of life’s puzzle came together. Intrigued, I finally did what the elders had asked me to do: pray and ask Heavenly Father if their words and the Book of Mormon were true. They assured me that God answers prayers.

As I prayed and studied the scriptures more deeply, these doctrines became sweet to my soul. For months I hesitated, feeling that I needed solid evidence, needed to know everything about the gospel before joining this Church. Finally, the words of the Savior in John 20:29 spoke to my soul: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” I decided to be baptized.

My parents required that I wait until I was an adult to be baptized, but the time waiting helped in my progression and knowledge of the gospel.

Brianna has danced in the program since she was in eighth grade. “It has strengthened my testimony so much,” says the honor student, who is also involved in the school’s dance group and competition cheer squad.
In a devotional she told the dancers, “Christ can turn our shabby gifts into a beautiful miracle and a shining star.”
Brianna has been able to use the program for missionary experiences, inviting a friend to dance as Mary and another to perform a vocal solo for one of the dances.
“I knew they would be able to feel the Spirit and also bring their families so they would be able to share in this, too,” she says.

Tony brought to the adventure the exalted title of commercial hot-air balloonist, and several of the young men are now close to earning the same title, but the beginnings were a little ragged. Their public debut was before a packed stadium at a BYU homecoming football game. They went aloft tethered to a long rope, but a vicious gusty wind soon aborted the venture. Trying to land they got on top of a fence somehow, and the basket tipped over. Tony ended the rout by pulling the rip panel that opens a slit the length of the balloon and deflates it. About that time the BYU marching band swung into “Up, Up and Away” in a fine touch of gallows humor, and some little boys, seeing the long opening in the side of the $5,000 balloon, made a business proposition. “Hey, mister,” they shouted, “your balloon is broken. Can we have it?”
The offer was declined, and the crew went on to become proficient balloonists. They can assemble, launch, fly, land, and repack the unit with cool competence, observing all safety requirements.

When I was ten or eleven years old, I became the Primary organist in the ward in Hawaii where I grew up. That is one of my most vivid Primary memories. I remember being very nervous. I remember making many mistakes. But I remember even more clearly that the Primary leaders cared more about me than about the mistakes I made.

The Church wasn’t organized in a church building, but in a log house. The Prophet Joseph Smith had come to stay there with the Whitmer family in 1829. The original house no longer stands, but this log cabin is on the same spot.
3. On April 6, 1830, about 60 people came to a special meeting. Joseph Smith officially organized the Church, and the sacrament was blessed and passed. This was the first sacrament meeting!
4. Right after the meeting, Joseph Smith’s parents and several other people were baptized outside.

Wangu, of the Kibuyu tribe, liked the hot dust of the road squeezing up between his brown toes. The African plain around him was spotted with many colored flowers, showing against the yellow grasses waving in the gentle breeze. Nandi flame trees flashed in the glaring sunshine. Wangu felt happy. He was sure something good was going to happen to him. Already he had found his bwana’s (white-man boss’s) lost cow and now he could see the tops of the huts in his shamba (village).
Wangu turned to pull on the lead rope to make the cow walk faster, and then he saw the bicycle. It was in the ditch beside the road and almost covered with thorn bushes. Wangu jumped into the ditch and with his panga (machete-like knife) he chopped the thorn bushes away. Then he dragged the bicycle up to the road.
It was a very old bicycle. Both its wheels were dented and it had many broken spokes. Its chain was stiff with rust. Some bwana threw it away a long time ago, he thought, but it was a bicycle and to own a bicycle was something Wangu had dreamed about.
Wangu had trouble leading the cow and carrying the bicycle, but he struggled on. A little farther along the road he stepped off into the grass, walking toward his shamba. He heard the neighing of an unseen zebra and the roar of simba (lion) a long distance away. The sounds did not disturb Wangu because he was thinking deeply about his four sons. They were a year or two apart in age, starting at age nine. He thought how much each boy would like a bicycle.
When Wangu entered the village his oldest son was the first to greet him. “What will you do with the broken bicycle, Father?” he asked.
His other three sons quickly gathered around him as he answered. “I will make it whole again so that it will be useful.”
“It is a beautiful bicycle,” his nine-year-old son said wistfully.
“I will make it even more beautiful,” Wangu promised, putting the broken bicycle in his thingira, a special hut where his wife could not enter. Then he took the cow to its place among his employer’s cattle.
Wangu began work on the bicycle by taking it apart. For help in understanding how to do it and to borrow tools, he went to the nearby mission.
Each month Wangu took part of the shillingi (English money) his bwana paid him for the work he did, and walked the seven miles to the ducca (general store) and bought new parts for the bicycle.
Repairing the bicycle was slow work, but for Wangu it was a work of joy. As he worked, his thoughts kept wandering to the worth of his four sons. He thought of how proud he was of them and of how fine and helpful they were to him.
Just before he finished working on the bicycle, he decided that his sons deserved to have it. But he couldn’t give it to all of them. Wangu knew that if he did that, the bicycle would cause many quarrels. He must give it to just one boy. He wondered how he could do that without hurting the feelings of the others.
Wangu painted the bicycle red and yellow; and while he waited for the paint to dry, he tried hard to think of a way to give it to just one of his sons. The answer came to him the night before he would take the bicycle out of his thingira and show it to all the people in the village.
The next morning Wangu wheeled the sparkling, newly painted bicycle out onto the hard-packed dirt in the center of the circle of beehive-shaped huts made out of wattle and mud. The people came running from all directions, shouting words of praise for the bicycle. Wangu waited for quiet and until his sons stood in front of him. As he looked at them he thought of how well they cared for his sheep and goats.
“It is my wish to give this bicycle to one of my sons, and I have found a way to do it fairly,” Wangu announced. “The people at the mission have taught us to write our names and some of the white man’s words.” Then he spoke directly to his sons. “Go and get a calabash (clay bowl shaped like a gourd), four pieces of paper, and a pencil.”
The boys left in an excited rush. Wangu waited, beaming under the admiration of the people. He waited until he became impatient. It seemed that his sons were taking much too long. When they finally arrived on the run he frowned at them.
“You will each write your name on a piece of paper, fold it so the name cannot be seen, and drop it into the calabash,” he told them. “Then I will lift out a name and whoever owns the name owns the bicycle.”
When this was done Wangu took the calabash and shook it. He pulled a paper from it. Wangu was the name written on the paper.
“This is the wrong name,” he said gruffly.
With his fingers in the calabash he stirred the papers around. Then he quickly took another one and unfolded it slowly. Wangu was also written on that paper. In a fast movement he grabbed the remaining two papers in the calabash and on each one was written the name Wangu.
All his sons had wanted him to have the bicycle. Tears filled Wangu’s eyes and his heart seemed almost to burst with the great love he felt for his sons.

How do we find our cousins? In two ways.

First, we go to our chart, and we find those closely related to our great-great-great- grandmothers or grandfathers. For example, I might go up my chart to Grandma Frances Bowen Evans and then look at the families of Grandma Evans’s brothers and sisters. She had five sisters and two brothers. In this way, I can find my cousins.

Michael knew that Christmas would not be the same this year. Although everything else would be the same—the manger scene that was always set up on top of the piano, the Christmas tree he and his father would go up in the mountains to cut, the Christmas cookies his mother and younger brothers and sisters would make—it would not be the same this year, because Michael was not the same.
He didn’t know what to do about it.
He had messed up.
He was not as good as everyone thought he was.
He tried not to think about it because it was embarrassing and painful. It made him feel guilty. Nobody else knew about it. And nobody would ever find out.
It had happened on fast Sunday in December. It was during church. His mother asked him to take his two-year-old brother, Zach, out because he was acting up. Out in the hall Zach started playing around where coats were hung up. Zach liked to get down on his hands and knees and crawl through the maze of coats. Somehow in the process Zach pulled a purse off the coatrack and knocked it to the floor. Everything spilled out.
Michael knelt down and started putting things back in the purse. Zach quickly ran away, thinking he was in big trouble. Michael decided to look in the billfold to find out who it belonged to. As he opened the billfold, he saw a stack of five-dollar bills.
Michael looked around, grabbed one of the five-dollar bills and slipped it into his pocket, put everything back in the purse, and put the purse back up on the coat rack.
He got Zach, picked him up, and took him back to sacrament meeting.
And that was it.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d taken the money. He didn’t need it for anything. Of course he liked to play video games at the mall after school, and that’s where the money eventually went, but it wasn’t like an obsession with him or anything.
He wondered if he would ever get caught, and if he were caught, and someone asked him why he’d taken the money, what he would say. He wasn’t sure. There didn’t seem to be any reason. He remembered he’d been upset with his mother because of something she’d said before they left for church, something about his always making them late for church. He tried to imagine telling a policeman, I stole the money because my mother got mad at me for making us late for church.
And now here it was, a Monday night, two weeks before Christmas. Their family had a large manger scene they set out on top of the piano every Christmas Eve. It had been in the family for as long as he could remember. His grandfather, who had died two years earlier, had carved it when his mother was a child. When Michael was a little boy he had been fascinated by the mules and straw and the cow and Mary and Joseph and the little baby Jesus in the wooden manger.
That night his mother asked him to take charge of unpacking the manger. He would unpack each figure and give it to one of his brothers or sisters for them to place on top of the piano. Each figure was wrapped in tissue paper.
Michael used to like this family tradition, but this year for some reason he didn’t feel the same about it. He just wanted to get it over with and get back to his video game.
The box was empty. “Okay, that’s it. Can I go now?” he asked.
“Where’s baby Jesus?” his mother asked. “We haven’t put him out yet.”
He looked through the box, but all he found was tissue paper. “It’s not here,” he said.
“It has to be there. Where else could it be?”
He dumped the contents of the box onto the floor. “I’m telling you it’s not here.”
“How can we have the manger scene without baby Jesus?” his mother asked.
“Look, I don’t know, but I did what you told me to do. I’m finished. I just want to go back to the TV room.”
“Michael, we’ve got to have the baby Jesus for our manger scene, or it won’t mean anything. You’re good with your hands just like your grandfather was. Will you carve us another one?”
“Why can’t we just buy one?”
“It wouldn’t be the right size. Besides your grandfather carved this. He’s not here with us anymore, but you’re good at things like that. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it will mean so much more if someone in our family does it.”
“Oh, all right,” he grumbled.
The next day Michael’s father brought him a carving knife, several blades, and a small piece of fine wood. He laid it on Michael’s bed when he came home from work. Michael pushed it aside and said he was too busy and that he’d wait for school to be out before he began.
Finally at three in the afternoon on Christmas Eve he had run out of excuses and his mother had run out of patience. He decided to start. It doesn’t have to be much, he thought. Just get it done.
He spread old newspapers on the kitchen table and started to rough out the general shape.
An hour later his mother came in to see how he was doing. She put her hand on his shoulder and watched him carve. “You’ve got a gift, Michael, just like your grandfather. You’re so much like him.”
“I’m not anything like him,” Michael said, sounding almost bitter.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. You’ve seemed kind of grumpy lately.”
“I’m just getting tired of the same old thing every Christmas. Why do we have to have a manger scene anyway?”
“That’s what Christmas is all about.”
“A baby was born in a stable and shepherds came. So what?”
“We don’t celebrate Christmas because a baby was born in a stable and shepherds came. We celebrate Christmas because that baby is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.”
“The world still seems messed up to me.”
“He saves the world one person at a time. He gives us hope. He helps us understand that it’s never too late to begin again. If we’ve made mistakes, if we truly repent we can be forgiven. When that happens, our burden of guilt is lifted. That’s why we celebrate Christmas.”
She knows, he thought.
He quit carving. “Something is wrong with me,” he said.
“Tell me what it is.”
He wiped the beads of sweat from off his forehead.
“Michael, whatever it is, tell me. We can work it out.”
He took a deep breath and said, “I took five dollars from a purse three weeks ago at church.”
“You did?”
“Yes. You knew about it, didn’t you?”
“No, not really. I knew something was wrong though. I just wasn’t sure what. You weren’t acting the same—but I didn’t know what it was.”
“Why did you talk about making mistakes then?”
“Because I make mistakes too. We never outgrow the need for the Savior in our lives.” She paused. “What do you think you should do?”
“I was thinking of waiting until after Christmas and then going to tell the bishop what I did.”
“Is waiting a good idea? It will gnaw at you until you do something.”
“But it’s Christmas Eve. The bishop will be home with his family.”
“Why don’t you see what he says? You’ll enjoy Christmas a lot more if you’ve started resolving this. It’s still early. I don’t think he’d mind if you stopped by.”
“I don’t want Jessica to know what I’ve done.”
“He won’t tell anyone in his family, not his wife, not Jessica, and not his other children. Why not call and see if he’s there?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell him you have a private matter you need to discuss with him.”
Fifteen minutes later Michael walked up to the door. He rang the doorbell. The one thing he dreaded was that Jessica would answer the door and he would have to tell her he needed to talk to her father and she would guess that something was wrong.
But the bishop opened the door, shook his hand, and led him downstairs to an office. Michael could hear family noises from upstairs. They were singing Christmas carols. He could hear Jessica’s voice. She had a beautiful singing voice. He had sung with her in a quartet once for church. He wondered if she would ever talk to him again.
“Three weeks ago I stole five dollars from a purse at church,” he blurted out.
Michael was surprised at the bishop’s reaction. He didn’t say, “How could you do that?” He didn’t order him out of his house. He didn’t call the police and have him thrown in jail. He didn’t tell him he was the worst person in the world. He didn’t tell him never to talk to his daughter Jessica again.
What he did was loan Michael five dollars. And then the two of them drove to the home of the woman who reported that someone had gone through her purse and taken five dollars. She was a widow and the money in her purse was her tithing.
When she opened the door, she smiled and invited them in.
“Are you my new home teachers?” she asked.
“No, not exactly.”
“Would you like some Christmas cookies? My grandchildren sent them.”
“Not right now,” the bishop said. “Michael has something he needs to tell you.”
“I’m the one who took five dollars from your purse,” Michael said quickly.
“Oh, Michael, not you! I never would have thought you would do something like that.”
“I’m really sorry.” He handed her the five-dollar bill the bishop had loaned him. “I came to give you five dollars.”
“Do you need the money, because if you do …”
“No, I don’t need it. I don’t know why I took it.”
“It takes a big man to admit when he’s done wrong.”
“That’s right,” the bishop said. “But it’s only part of repenting. You need to make sure you’ve done all you can and that you’re right with the Lord.”
It was silent for a moment. “Would you like a Christmas cookie now?” the widow asked.
Michael turned away so she wouldn’t see his eyes.
There could be no leaving until they had a Christmas cookie. To Michael the cookie tasted like sawdust. Finally, mercifully, the bishop said all the right things to get them out of there.
The bishop gave him a ride home. “You owe me five dollars,” he said as they pulled into Michael’s driveway.
“I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
“What did you use the money for?” the bishop asked.
“Video games.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t play video games until you get this taken care of.”
“All right.”
“You and I will need to have a long talk next week about the process of repentance,” the bishop said. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. But relax, you’ve done the most difficult part today. I’m glad you had the courage to admit you’d done wrong. That’s never easy.” The bishop leaned over and shook his hand. “Merry Christmas, Michael.”
Instead of playing video games or watching TV, Michael spent the rest of Christmas Eve finishing the carving of baby Jesus. He finished at eleven o’clock that night. Everyone else in the family had gone to bed. All the lights were off except a reading light near the piano. Michael gently set the carved figure in the manger and placed a tiny blanket over it. It wasn’t as good as the one his grandfather had made, but to Michael it meant much more.
Two months later they found the original baby Jesus in another box in the basement. But even so, from then on, they always put out the one Michael had carved the year he discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Until a year ago, I guess you could describe me as the kind of person who tried to impress others by wearing the latest styles and the coolest accessories. I always wasted my money on this stuff. My parents began to cringe when I said I was going to the mall, wondering what kind of clothes I would come back with.
One day in my Sunday School class we talked about obtaining a change of heart and how this could strengthen our testimonies. Our teacher said that if we really had a desire to change and had a prayer in our hearts, we could open up the scriptures to any page and find an answer on how we could change. I decided to try this and see if it would really work for me.
With a true prayer in my heart, I closed my eyes and opened my scriptures. To my surprise, the first few verses on that page related to me: “In all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes, for they began to wear very costly apparel … and to set their hearts upon riches and upon the vain things of the world, that they began to be scornful, one towards another” (see Alma 4:6, 8).
As soon as I read those verses, I knew I had my answer. I didn’t have some instant, wonderful change inside me. But I knew what I needed to do. I just had to have faith and act on my answer.
I tried to repent and become humble. I stopped worrying about having the coolest or the most “in” clothes. Instead I used the money I would normally spend on clothes to start private voice lessons and began to save money to go to the youth conference Especially for Youth.
As I stuck to what I knew would bring me my change of heart, I started to realize what was important in life. It certainly wasn’t clothes. Slowly but surely, the Spirit worked on me until I practically became a new person. I found that I was not only experiencing a change of heart, as my Sunday School teacher said, but I was also gaining a stronger testimony.
Now other people notice the change as well. All my friends noticed, my mom noticed, and even my little brothers noticed. I had one brother say to me, “Gosh, Kristin, you’re so nice now. What happened to you?”
I recently found this verse while reading the scriptures, “And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?” (Alma 5:14). I love that verse because now I can answer “Yes!”

Illustrations by Shauna Mooney Kawasaki
Look at that! It’s gorgeous! It’s glowing like a lightbulb.
This dye is amazing. It turns ordinary eggs into magnificent, marvelous Easter eggs.
That’s kind of what Easter does for us.
At Easter we celebrate Jesus Christ’s Atonement for our sins. Every time we repent, we become more magnificent and marvelous and more like Heavenly Father.
And every time we do good things, we become more like Him!
Let’s give Easter eggs to some of our older neighbors.
That’s a great idea!

After serving in the Peru Lima North Mission, he returned to his hometown of Arequipa. There he developed a friendship with a young woman named Carol Pacheco. The fellow converts were married on May 31, 1994, in the Lima Peru Temple. They are the parents of two children.

Our grandson Ethan is 17. I was touched this summer when he told me that, inspired by his mother’s example, he prays each day to have an opportunity to serve someone. As we spent time with his family, I observed how Ethan treats his brother and sisters with patience, love, and kindness and is helpful to his parents and looks for ways to reach out to others. I am impressed with how aware he is of the people around him and of his desire to serve them. He is an example to me. Doing as Ethan does—inviting the Lord to help us find ways to serve—will allow the Spirit to open our eyes to see the needs around us, to see the “one” who needs us that day, and to know how to minister to him or her.

I had been a committed member of another church, but then I started studying its teachings about purgatory. This idea teaches that the soul, after physical death, is admitted to a place similar to prison, where it must be purified before going to paradise.
As I thought about suffering souls in purgatory, I reflected on my own spiritual future and my relationship with Jesus Christ. I began praying, “What must I do to escape purgatory? I want to go to paradise.”
The first thing that came to my mind was to live the Ten Commandments. I felt that if I did, the Lord’s grace would allow me to avoid purgatory. I committed to keep the commandments and began an intense period of fasting, praying, studying the scriptures, and meditating.
During this time, I felt prompted to ask an unusual question of a doctor at the clinic where I worked as chief accountant.
“Dr. Thibaut,” I said, “is the Lord Jesus Christ in your church?”
He stated that he belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From that point on, the Spirit guided our discussion. I asked him about the differences between his church and mine. He told me about the Book of Mormon. As we continued our conversation, joy filled my heart. I felt that I was receiving answers to my prayers.
Two days later the missionaries gave me a Book of Mormon, which I read and studied with them. I found it wonderful to learn new things from the scriptures. I started obeying the Word of Wisdom.
When I realized I had lost interest in my church, where I had been so involved, I wondered what was happening. I prayed and asked God about this new path. When I did, I felt more convinced of the truth I had found. I decided to join the Church, even though I knew I would face persecution.
Persecution did come, but the Lord strengthened me. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the answer to my sincere prayer: “I want to go to paradise.” I know I can go there after I die if I remain faithful to the commandments of God.