Gospel Story Finder

My coach taught me a great lesson in my early development as a gymnast. I was leaving for my first national team training camp. Before I traveled to the camp, my coach told me only one thing. He didn’t tell me to learn any new maneuvers at the camp. He didn’t tell me to try to perform my routines better than the rest of the team. He told me that when I returned from that training camp that he wanted to hear me tell him, with all honesty, that I had worked harder than anyone else on the national team.
So I remember making it a point to be the last one out of the gym every day; and that didn’t mean just waiting at the door for everyone else to leave! Also, I remember that at night, when some team members would occasionally relax with their pizza and beer, I would go back to my room and do more exercises.
When I returned home two weeks later, I was proud to tell my coach, “Yes, I worked harder than everyone else.” I didn’t work twice as hard, just a little bit harder. But it was enough to help me to improve greatly. Sometimes, just a little bit is all that matters.

One day while I was riding in the car with Dad, a song that was not good came on the radio. It was about gambling. I remembered that one of My Gospel Standards says: I will only listen to music that is pleasing to Heavenly Father. I asked my dad to change the station. I had a good feeling after that. I know we’re supposed to choose the right and do good things and not do the bad things that Satan wants us to do. I’m glad to have My Gospel Standards because they help me choose the right.

At a recent stake conference the stake president called a young father, who had just been ordained an elder, from the audience to bear his testimony. The father had been active in the Church as a boy, but during his teenage years had veered somewhat from his childhood pattern. After returning from the military service he married a lovely girl and presently children blessed their home. Without warning an undisclosed illness overcame their little four-year-old daughter. Within a very short time she was on the critical list in the hospital. In desperation and for the first time in many years the father went to his knees in prayer—asking that her life be spared. As her condition worsened and he sensed that she would not live, the tone of the father’s prayers changed—he no longer asked that her life be spared—but rather for a blessing of understanding—“Let thy will be done,” he said. Soon the child was in a coma, indicating her hours on earth were few. Now, fortified with understanding and trust, the young parents asked for one more favor of the Lord. Would he allow her to awaken once more that they might hold her closely. The little one’s eyes opened, her frail arms outstretched to her mother and then to her daddy for a final embrace. When the father laid her on the pillow to sleep till another morning, he knew their prayers had been answered—a kind, understanding Father in heaven had filled their needs as he knew them to be. His will had been done—they had gained understanding—they were determined now to live that they might live again with her.

It worried me when I noticed that my good friend was not coming to church anymore. Her close friend, I found, had recently passed away, and she was beginning to doubt. One day I invited her to a party with some girls from church. I made it a goal to bring up the Church once. After the others left, we talked about various Church topics that I would have never thought to talk to her about. I learned that by doing my part, the Lord will take care of the rest. All we need to do is open our mouths (see D&C 28:16).
Rebecca T., 16, Washington

Nearly every week I attend a stake conference somewhere in the world, so I am not able to attend the Gospel Doctrine class in my ward where the Book of Mormon is being taught this year. It really pained me to miss this privilege of catching the spirit of this very sacred other testament that Jesus is the Christ. So my wife and I set a goal to study the Book of Mormon at home. We determined to finish the 1984 course of study for the Gospel Doctrine class before this April general conference. We began in January; and on Monday, March 12, we finished the last of the forty-six lessons of the Book of Mormon course. It really felt good to accomplish this goal.

Janet: Keeping things in perspective as it relates to dealing with discouragement affected our own relationship early on and in a very important way. When Rex and I were dating at BYU, he surprised me one night by indicating that he felt our relationship was getting serious. But I had just begun to come to terms with my own feelings, and he was way ahead of me. All of my logic told me Rex had everything I could ever want in a husband, yet I needed that bolt of lightning to strike me and say, “This is the one!” Well, it came in a very unexpected way. For one entire week my concern was that he was getting too serious. Then one evening he suggested that we should date other people again. I was stunned, but I agreed and said good night. I was not prepared for the emotion I was about to feel. As the door closed behind me, the fear of losing him was more than I could bear. I stood frozen in the dark, leaning against the door for support. The world seemed to have stopped, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to start again without Rex there with me. I cried as though my heart would break. How clearly now I could see the priceless gem that was almost mine, but it seemed to be slipping away from my grasp. What other girl did he have in mind when he mentioned dating “others”?
Rex: The answer is simple: I really didn’t have anybody in mind.
Janet: Yeah, right. I think he’s lying.
Rex: That’s nonsense and she knows it. She can’t give you the name of anyone else because there was no one else. Actually, I was sure she was the one, and quite frankly I can’t explain why I suggested maybe we ought to date some other people for a while. It was probably just an irrational stalling technique.
During the intervening week I felt pretty good about the new “date other people” arrangement until she actually did what I suggested we do. That next Friday night, after having been away for a few days, I
came back to town looking forward to seeing Janet. I was stunned to learn that she was actually on a date with someone else. Apparently she had recovered from a broken heart and a world that had come to an end with amazing speed. At first I felt betrayed, then angry, and then within five minutes I realized I had brought the circumstance on myself and began to worry. When her roommates told me who her date was, my worry turned to panic. I knew the guy. How would she dare go out with someone like him? He was better looking than I, had a lot more money, and a lot better car. In terms of intelligence and righteousness, we were about dead even. But he definitely had a more engaging personality. The bottom line: On a ten-point scale, he beat me by three points. Was I now to lose out on the best deal that ever came into my life? So desperately I wanted to turn the clock back seven days, because I could see much more clearly than I had one week earlier how lucky I was to have what I had previously taken for granted.
I came back the next night. She wouldn’t come out of her room. The reason, she said, was that she had washed her hair and was blowing it dry. I never could figure that one out. In the first place, I wanted to see her—whether her hair was wet or dry didn’t matter two cents worth. Moreover, I’d washed my hair before. Drying time? A minute thirty seconds max.
Janet: Yes, but don’t you remember that during those days you had a crew cut? You could dry your hair with a towel.
Rex: All right, so you had more hair. But not even Samson and Rapunzel back-to-back should have taken the whole evening. Anyway, I did what any red-blooded American boy would do. I stood outside her dorm and threw rocks at her window. But all was not lost. By the next night she was ready to talk and for some reason was willing to overlook my three-point deficit.
Janet: Through that experience Rex and I came to the realization that we had brought about our own discouragement because we had lost perspective by not appreciating what we already had.

Gerald Horton Bath told the experience of a small African boy who
listened carefully as the teacher explained why it is that Christians give presents to each other on Christmas day. “The gift is an expression of our joy over the birth of Jesus and our friendship for each other,” she said.
When Christmas day came, the boy brought to the teacher a sea shell of lustrous beauty. “Where did you ever find such a beautiful shell?” the teacher asked as she gently fingered the gift.
The youth told her that there was only one spot where such extraordinary shells could be found. When he named the place, a certain bay several miles away, the teacher was left speechless.
“Why . . . why, it’s gorgeous . . . wonderful, but you shouldn’t have gone all that way to get a gift for me.”
His eyes brightening, the boy answered, “Long walk part of gift.”

Elder Joseph Cottam, of the Spain Madrid Mission, commented, “I’ve always been fully into music, ever since listening to my iPod Touch and my headphones when I was seven years old. At that age, I started playing the piano a little bit and the guitar, but I started playing the drums when I was 11 years old and that’s when I started rocking. My brother, Dan, and I started to rock the roof off our living room when we started playing the drums and guitar together. We then gathered the band together and played through all our teenage years pretty much every week until we were headlining shows, playing at festivals, winning competitions, and recording music videos. Then the time came when I had to start considering a mission; it was honestly something I had tried to avoid thinking about up to that point. I had a mindset that if we made the band big and rocked the world, we would be the best missionaries in the world. Obviously, God has different ideas to us. After a lot of prayer and thought, I and my brother decided to start with our mission papers. The reason being that I figured out that God knows what is best for us. He has shown us the path to follow, and we just must follow it without trying to compromise or trying to make our own paths. I also had a trust that God would make sure that everything went okay. He knows what means a lot to us in this life and he will cater for our desires if we always put him first. So that’s what I decided to do. Leaving everything behind we worked for was a blow for a while; it was our dream; it was everything we wanted to do but then the quarantine came, and everything stopped. The world was on pause and then I said to myself, “Wow. God does know best; He knew that if we accepted that record deal and continued, we would have been in a massive pickle.” That was the time when I knew for a fact God was guiding us in this.”

I desire to mention another special personal experience. I was teaching a class of many, many people in a chapel and adjoining cultural hall at the university. It was too large a class to permit much participation, but one night, facing maybe six or seven hundred people, I looked down and saw a face and said, “Bishop Garrett, do you have something you would like to share with us on the subject we are discussing?” This startled him for a moment, and then he said, “Yes, I think I do, Brother Hanks.”

He came to the front and spoke: “A wonderful older couple lived in our ward. I was their bishop, and I also became almost like a son to them. They had no relatives and really no close friends. For reasons not necessary to mention, they moved to a little town far from this city. We kept in touch by phone because they had so few other contacts in this country.

“Then one night, as I walked to an early meeting of my bishopric, I had a clear vision. I am not a visionary man, but in my mind I saw something that night. I saw a long, narrow, oblong room with a casket at one end and a lady standing alone by it. I had read of the husband’s death in the morning newspaper. I had said to my wife, ‘We ought to go, but I can’t. I have an important meeting that I cannot miss.’

“I rushed to the meeting that evening and told my counselors I had made a bad mistake and should be someplace else and asked them to go on without me. I drove too swiftly all the way to that small town with its small mortuary. I went inside the long, narrow room, and there inside was my vision specifically fulfilled: a single, solitary little soul standing by the casket of her beloved, her husband of many years. I went to her and held out my arms. She said, ‘Oh, Bishop Garrett, I knew you would come.’”

Well, we ended the class with a testimony and an expression of gratitude. I knew what the Lord had wanted us to learn that night.

Bishop Keo
David Keo was the bishop of my late teen-aged years. He was quite formidable. He came to our house one Saturday morning to see me. Mom let him in and he knocked on my bedroom door. He said, “Boy, this is Bishop.” I opened the door and he motioned for me to come and sit at the dining room table. When I sat down, he said, “You are going on a mission. This Sunday you will start your paperwork. I will sustain you as the 2nd Counselor in the Young Men’s Presidency and an Assistant Scout Master to Larry Nihipali. You will also be the Deacon’s Quorum advisor. Any questions?”
I said, “No.” And so, it was. And so, I served, in the Ward, and in The Santa Rosa California Mission; the best mission in the world.
Would I have served a mission if Bishop Keo hadn’t come to the house? At that stage in my educational life, maybe, maybe not.
Did I understand what I was getting into by accepting those callings? At that stage in my educational life, No, but I learned quickly that I had to be an example to those 12-year-olds and oddly enough, it kept me in line upon line, upon line, upon line, until I learned.

When Tommy’s family left Sugar Creek camp, Tommy was driving one team of oxen and his father was driving another. It was the first time Tommy had ever driven, and he was so intent on what he was doing that he did not notice how bright the sun was shining nor how warm it was getting. He did not even notice that his mother had replaced her heavy winter coat with a light shawl. He only knew that it was necessary for him to crack the whip more often to keep the oxen moving. Suddenly he realized that this was because the ground was thawing; the wheels of the wagon were sinking deeper and deeper into the soft prairie mud, and it was harder and harder for the oxen to pull the load.
Tommy was afraid that they would never catch up with the main wagon train that had left Sugar Creek the day before. He was surprised and happy when late that afternoon he heard the sound of voices and knew that the camp was not far away. He coaxed the oxen on in soft, soothing tones.
“Steady now,” he said. “P-u-l-l together.” The oxen responded as if they understood every word. They lurched forward with such power that the wheels rolled easily, and soon Tommy found himself in camp surrounded by admiring friends.
“You drove all the way from Sugar Creek?” one asked.
“That’s great,” said another. “I wish my father would let me drive.”
Suddenly it started to rain. At first it was a soft, gentle rain that did not bother Tommy as he milked the cow and helped his father feed the oxen. Later, when they started to pitch the tent, the rain came down in fierce, angry sheets that bit into Tommy’s shoulders. The wind blew so hard that it wrenched the tent out of their hands.
“We’ll have to do without the tent tonight,” Father finally decided.
“Where will you and Mamma sleep?” asked Tommy. “My wagon is too full of corn and wheat for anybody to sleep there.”
“You and Betsy can sleep with Mamma in the other wagon,” answered his father, “and I will make a bed underneath it for me.”
“I will sleep under the wagon,” said Tommy quietly.
Father did not answer at once, but Tommy knew by the pressure of his hand that he was proud that his son had offered. Finally Father quietly said, “I’ll help you gather pine boughs to put on the ground so your bed won’t sink into the mud.”
Tommy was glad when they had enough pine boughs, because it was difficult to cut them in the stinging rain. Over these pine boughs he and his father put the folded tent, leaving enough of it free on each side to pull over the bedroll so Tommy would not get wet.
When the bed was ready, Tommy crawled into it. At first it was frightening to be alone in the storm. Never had he heard such loud thunder, and the lightning flashes were so close that he could see small fires appear in the tops of the trees where lightning had hit. Even though he knew the heavy rain would soon put them out, Tommy was afraid. What if the lightning should strike the wagon where the others are sleeping? he asked himself. He wanted to call out to his father for comfort, but he didn’t want anyone to know that he was afraid.
I’ll ask Heavenly Father to help me, he said to himself. And he did. Tommy almost expected his prayer to be answered by the thunder and the lightning stopping. Instead it was answered by Tommy not being afraid any more.
Then Tommy began to enjoy the storm. It was almost as if giant fireworks were everywhere. Instead of wanting to go to sleep, he wanted to stay awake so he would not miss any of it. But since the storm lasted all night, Tommy’s eyes finally closed. He did not open them again until he felt water lapping at his feet and discovered that the little creek beside which they had camped had become a raging torrent during the night.
Excitedly Tommy called out to his father, “The creek has overflowed and the back wheels of the wagon are standing in the water!”
Tommy’s father was out of the wagon in an instant. When he saw the situation, he helped Tommy pull the bed out from under the wagon and then hitched up both teams of oxen to pull the wagon out of the water. The ground was so slippery the oxen could not get a foothold.
“We will have to build a corduroy road,” said Tommy’s father.
To do this, Tommy and his father cut down many trees. They trimmed off the limbs and laid the poles side by side, close to and in front of the wagon; then with willows they bound each log tightly to the next one so they would not roll. When this was finished, they packed tough grass and pine needles on top of the poles so the oxen’s hoofs could not slip into the cracks.
Finally they coaxed the frightened oxen up onto the corduroy road and hitched them to the wagon. Father spoke to the oxen in soothing tones, “S-t-e-a-d-y now, p-u-l-l together.”
The oxen did pull together. The heavy wagon wheels rolled out of the mud, onto the tough grass, over the corduroy road, and up onto the road that the Camp of Israel would be traveling that day.
Tommy shouted, “Hooray!” But his mother cried because she was so proud of her two “men.”

In 1856, at age 13, Mary joined the Church with her family in England, traveled to America, and joined the Martin handcart company. In her personal history she recounts the difficulty of the journey—the loss of her baby brother and older brother, the freezing of her own feet, and finally the death of an infant sister and her mother. When she arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, the doctor amputated her toes, but she was promised by the prophet, Brigham Young, that she would not have to have any more of her feet cut off. She recounts: “One day I sat … crying. My feet were hurting me so—when a little old woman knocked at the door. She said she had felt someone needed her there for a number of days. … I showed her my feet. … She said, ‘Yes, and with the help of the Lord we will save them yet.’ She made a poultice and put on my feet and every day after the doctor had gone she would come and change the poultice. At the end of three months my feet were well.”

But Mary had sat in her chair so long that the cords of her legs had become stiff and she could not straighten them. When her father saw her condition, he cried. He rubbed her legs with oil and tried to straighten them, but it was of no use. One day he said, “Mary I have thought of a plan to help you. I will nail a shelf on the wall and while I am away to work you try to reach it.” She said that she tried all day for several days and at last she could reach the shelf. Then her father put the shelf a little higher. This went on for another three months, and through her daily diligence her legs were straightened and she learned to walk again.

I believe that you are learning, like Mary Goble, to reach just a little higher to the shelf our leaders have raised for us, and that if you will reach higher as those ideals are raised, you will become able to walk into the future with confidence.

Most of our missionaries come into the field because they love the Lord Jesus Christ and they desire to serve him and bring souls unto him. There are a few, however, who rationalize themselves out of a call or try to justify poor performance in the mission field—like the man who received his pay envelope and noticed that he had been shorted five dollars. He went to the paymaster and said, “You shorted me five dollars in my pay envelope this week.”
The paymaster responded, “Well, I have been expecting you. I noticed you didn’t come in complaining last week when I overpaid you five dollars.”
The fellow said, “Well, I can tolerate one mistake, but not two in a row.”

When I was five years old, I became very ill. It turned out that I had polio, a disease that was completely unknown to the small-town doctor. I lay for several weeks on a World War I army cot in our front room beside a coal stove. Afterward, I could not walk. I remember very clearly sliding around on the linoleum floor and pulling myself up on chairs, learning to walk again. I was more fortunate than some. A friend walked with crutches and steel leg braces all of his life.
As I moved into school, I found that my muscles were weak. I was very self-conscious. I knew that I could never be an athlete.
It did not help a lot when I read about the man who went to a doctor to find a cure for his inferiority complex. After a careful examination, the doctor told him, “You don’t have a complex. You really are inferior!”
With that for encouragement, I set about through life and determined to compensate in other ways.
I found hope in my patriarchal blessing. The patriarch, whom I had never met before, confirmed to me that patriarchs do have prophetic insight. He said that I had a desire to come to earth life and was willing to meet the tests that would accompany life in a mortal body. He said that I had been given a body of such physical proportion and fitness to enable my spirit to function through it unhampered by physical impediment. That encouraged me.
I learned that you should always take care of your body. Take nothing into your body that will harm it, such as we are counseled in the Word of Wisdom: tea, coffee, liquor, tobacco, or anything else that is habit-forming, addictive, or harmful.
Read section 89 in the Doctrine and Covenants. You will find great promises:
“All saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;
“And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;
“And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.”
And then this promise: “And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them.”10

Mother taught me that we have an obligation to give, that others don’t owe us a living, and that more joy comes from giving than receiving.
As a child, I desired a birthday party. I invited all of my friends to come—it wasn’t even near my birthday—and I carefully instructed them to each bring me a dime. When Mother heard of my trick, she immediately gave me a scolding, sat me down, and carefully explained why what I did was not right. Then she went with me to each of my friends so that I could apologize. It was an embarrassing lesson, but one I have never forgotten.

“Hi, honey.” Mom smiled as Keri hopped into the car.
“How was activity day?”
“Terrible,” Keri mumbled.
Mom pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the street. “What happened?” she asked.
“We planted flowers in Sister Jackson’s front yard.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Sister Jackson didn’t think so. She got mad at us.”
“Really? Why?”
“She said that petunias were her favorite flower, and we planted mostly marigolds.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It gets worse. She said we have to come back later and do it right. Mom, we can’t spend all of our activity days at her house. We’ve got other plans. All the girls want to learn how to knit so we can have matching scarves this winter.”
Mom patted Keri’s knee. “Tell you what—for family home evening we can plant petunias at Sister Jackson’s house. How would that be?”
Keri frowned. “All right, but it won’t be any fun. She’s grumpy and mean and demanding. We’d better have great refreshments so the night won’t be a total loss.”
The next Monday night Keri, Mom, Dad, and Keri’s little brother, Cole, arrived at Sister Jackson’s house with a box full of petunias. When Sister Jackson answered the door, she wasn’t smiling. “Plant them in the front,” she ordered, pointing with her cane. “And not too close together. Petunias need space to grow.”
As Keri and her family worked, Sister Jackson came out onto her porch. “You’ll need mulch,” she said. “I want the fine, red kind—none of that chunky gray stuff. Make sure you get enough.” She turned and hobbled back into the house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.
“See what I mean?” Keri growled. “She’s never satisfied. There’s always one more thing to do. This service project is going to go on and on for eternity.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mom asked, pulling off her gardening gloves. “The commandment to love our neighbors doesn’t have an expiration date. And eternal projects might just bring eternal blessings. Now, let’s go get the mulch while Dad and Cole finish planting the flowers.”
But all the way to the store, Keri kept grumbling. “What’s wrong with her, anyway? Why can’t she be grateful for what we’ve done? Why does she have to be so critical all the time?”
“I’ve been thinking about Sister Jackson,” Mom said. “She lives alone with no family nearby. She hasn’t been able to go to church for months because of her poor health. She must be lonely. Her home teachers and visiting teachers come, but the only time anyone else visits is when there’s a service project.”
“You mean, she’s stretching out this job so we’ll keep coming to see her?”
Mom nodded. “I think so.”
Keri shook her head in wonder. “Well, if she weren’t so grumpy, maybe people would want to visit her more often.”
“No one likes to always be asking for help,” Mom explained. “And no one likes to be seen as a ‘project’ to be finished and forgotten. Maybe that’s what makes her feel grumpy. Perhaps she wants to be viewed as a real person with something to give. Maybe she needs to serve, not just be served.”
“How?”
Mom shrugged. “I don’t really know. I guess we need to find out more about Sister Jackson.”
When they got back from the store, Sister Jackson was sitting on her front porch doing some kind of handicraft. As Dad and Cole helped lift the large bags of mulch from the back of the car, she squinted at them over her eyeglasses. “I also want that plastic edging around the flowers replaced with brick. You can bring the bricks next week.”
Mom winked at Keri, and Keri rolled her eyes. Then Keri noticed what Sister Jackson was doing. She was knitting! Suddenly Keri knew exactly what to do—if she dared. Wiping her hands on her jeans and saying a little prayer for courage, she stepped toward the porch. “Uh, Sister Jackson,” she said, “do you know how to knit?”
Sister Jackson leaned back in her chair and frowned. “Of course I do, child. Don’t you have eyes?”
“Ah, yes, well, we—that is, the girls who planted the marigolds and I—we’d like to learn how to knit scarves. Do you think you could teach us?”
Sister Jackson’s eyes lit up for just a moment. “But I can’t get out to the church, honey,” she said softly.
“That’s OK. We’ll come here, if that’s all right. It might take us a lot of lessons, though. We’re pretty slow learners.”
Sister Jackson nodded, and a faint smile crossed her lips. “I guess I could find the time somehow. Get a paper and pencil from my kitchen table, and write down what I tell you to bring. We’ve got to decide on colors and patterns, too. Go on now—it’s right inside the door.”
Keri looked at her mother and grinned. She knew that this was just the beginning of an activity that could go on for a long, long time. Maybe even for eternity. But that was OK with her.

I want to share with you some of the great blessings the Book of Mormon can bring to us. The Book of Mormon can and does change lives. After our son John received his mission call to Japan, he said to me, “Dad, before I enter the Missionary Training Center, I am going to read the Book of Mormon twice.” I said to John, “That is quite a demanding goal.” I felt his resolve and made the decision to follow his example. I began reading early each morning. A few days later when I came home from work, John said to me, “I caught up with you today.” I asked, “What do you mean?” His response: “I caught up to where you are in the Book of Mormon. You left it open on your desk.” The next morning after my reading, I felt inspired to turn about 150 pages past where I was. I left my Book of Mormon open where he could not miss it and went to work. After a meeting that morning, I checked my voice mail. The very first message said, “Yeah, sure, Dad!”

Why this story? As I watched my son read from the Book of Mormon, I began to see a special change in his life as he prepared to enter the Missionary Training Center. That experience has anchored my son to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Several years ago, when I was a Primary teacher, our ward Primary planned an outing to see the Salt Lake Temple. Everyone was excited about the chance to be near the temple and to talk about it together.
We had planned our outing for the first Saturday in May, but that day a major snowstorm hit the city. The question in everybody’s mind was “Are we still going to go?”
The snow was falling as we gathered at the ward. The Primary president said to us, “I know you’ve all been concerned, but I’ve prayed about it and I’ve been impressed that we should still go.”
We climbed into the cars, and by the time we got to the temple and unloaded everyone, the snowstorm had stopped and the sun was out. The Lord had known that all these children were coming to see His temple. We were able to walk around the beautiful temple and have a wonderful time. How special it was—and is—to know that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers, and watches over His children everywhere!

“I hear you’ve got a big date for the prom,” my younger brother Max commented at dinner.
“Who said I had a date for prom?” I asked casually, continuing to eat my potatoes and gravy. I could feel Mom’s and Dad’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look up.
“Oh, I heard some of the guys talking,” Max answered. I noticed a mischievous glint in his eyes. Max is only 11 months younger than me, but he towers over me four and a half inches. Therefore, he likes to think of himself as Mean Max. Already as a sophomore he has quarterbacked our varsity football team to a division championship and is now playing first base for the varsity baseball team. “How’d you get Dale Beecher to ask you?” he snickered. “I know Dad can’t afford to bribe him.”
“Max,” I cut in, glowering over at him.
“I heard Dale tell Cory Crandell,” Max insisted.
“But I haven’t told him yes.”
“What?” Max asked, setting his fork on his plate.
“I’m just not going with him,” I shrugged.
Max finished chewing. “Any reason? Or do you have so many dates nowadays that you can afford to turn down lowly guys like Dale Beecher?”
Even for a younger brother, Max really is good looking. More than once my best friend Sandra Bentley has joked about taking Max out.
“Line me up with your brother Beau, and I’ll line you up with Max,” I would bargain jokingly.
“You’ve got a deal. When do you—”
“Don’t you dare say anything to Beau,” I’d threaten. For about ten years I’d had this terrible crush on Beau Bentley. He was a freshman in college, and every girl in town was in love with him. He had been a football and basketball hero, seminary president, and last year’s senior boy voted most likely to succeed.
“Max,” Dad cut in, “let Denise worry about her own dates. Maybe this Beecher fellow isn’t good enough for Denise.”
“Dad, about the time she gets that picky, she won’t ever have a date. Why, I can think of a hundred girls that Dale could—”
“Max,” Dad cautioned from the end of the table.
“So you’re going to turn him down?” Max asked. He looked down the table at Dad, held up his hands in surrender and added, “I’m just asking, not hassling her. Why can’t you go?”
“It’s not like money is our most abundant commodity, Max.”
“Money? Why do you need money to go to a stupid dance?”
I didn’t want to explain what Max already knew. Since Dad had been laid off things had been tight around our place and would be until he returned to work at the end of May, the week after prom.
“A prom isn’t like a regular dance,” I explained impatiently. “You don’t just wear a dress to the prom,” I pointed out. “It has to be a formal, something nice. You have to buy a flower for the guy. I would definitely need new shoes.”
“I think we could help you out,” Mom volunteered.
“Mom, we can’t even buy a jug of milk. We have to drink that putrid powdered stuff from our food storage, and you think we can waste money on a prom formal?”
“It’s your prom, Denise,” Mom went on. “We’ve all planned on your going. You’ve put so much time and work into it, being on the prom committee and all. It wouldn’t be fair if you stayed home.”
“Yeah, we’ll help you, Denise,” Melanie called out.
“Thanks,” I smiled, amazed that the family would really volunteer so willingly, “but I couldn’t feel good about letting you do that.” I could feel a warm blush on my cheek. “This isn’t the last dance of my life. It’s just prom. We really can’t justify throwing money away on the prom.”
“Sometimes there are things a family needs to sacrifice for,” Dad said.
“You don’t go around sacrificing to go to a stupid prom,” I smiled. “Don’t worry. I haven’t planned on going. Really. It’s just no big deal.”
I was proud of the way I handled things at the dinner table. I had been indifferent about the whole thing. I almost thought I’d convinced myself—until I got to my room, closed the door, and was alone. Then I bawled for the next 45 minutes nonstop.
It was a little after 8:30 P.M. when a knock sounded on my door. “Come in,” I said, quickly wiping away my tears.
The door pushed open and in walked Max. “So, how’s the family martyr?” he greeted, plopping down on my bed.
“What?” I gasped.
“Oh, don’t sacrifice for me,” he began to mimic me, daintily clasping his hands in front of his chest, batting his eyes furiously and using a high-pitched voice. “Sacrifice for everyone else, but oh mercy don’t sacrifice for me.” He snickered, shook his head and then asked in his regular tone of voice, “What are you trying to do, play Cinderella?”
I glared at him. “Max, I’m really not in the mood for your jokes; I have a ton of homework.”
“So you don’t really want to go to the prom?” he asked. “You just want the rest of us to go into mourning.”
I hesitated and bit down on my lower lip. “I’m not going.”
“You don’t want to go?” he persisted, studying me.
For a moment I thought I detected a hint of compassion in Mean Max’s teasing eyes. “If things were different here at home.”
“Denise,” Max cut in. He placed his forearms on his knees. He knit his fingers together and stared at the floor. “How much would it cost to go? I don’t mean if you went out and bought a fancy formal,” he added quickly. “Mom could make you something if she had some material. What would everything cost?”
I shrugged. “Maybe $25 or $30 for material. I really don’t know, though. About the same for the shoes. But I’m just making wild guesses because—”
“You could get by with $80 then?”
I stared at Max, completely baffled. I nodded once. Max stood up, reached into his pocket and pulled out four twenties and tossed them to me. I stared dumbly down at the twenties, unable to think. I knew Max had a little money put away. “I can’t take your money, Max,” I stammered. “You’re saving for a set of weights.”
“Hey, it’s not a gift, Denise,” he said, starting for the door. “I just don’t want you to go around broadcasting our poverty. It’s a loan.” He coughed nervously. “Until you get some bucks to pay me back.”
I could feel tears in my eyes, and a lump as big as my fist in my throat. “And what if I can’t ever pay you back?” I asked, totally bewildered and struggling to keep the sob out of my voice.
He turned and jabbed a finger in my direction and in his best Mean Max tone said, “You’ll pay me back, Denise. I don’t handle charity cases.”
Laughing and crying at the same time, I ran over to Max and threw my arms around his neck and said, “Thanks, Max.”
“Now don’t slobber and bawl all over me,” he growled, pushing me away. “You don’t have to get so emotional over a lousy loan.”
The whole family pitched in after that. Mom started on the dress. Sanford, Valerie, and Melanie pooled baby-sitting money and insisted on buying the boutonniere. Mom fixed my hair. And Dad surprised me by getting me a pair of earrings and a necklace. I knew they must have broken him, but he acted as if it were nothing. And all the while, Mean Max groaned and grumbled about all the fuss over a stupid junior prom.
Friday morning, the day of the prom, during breakfast the phone rang. It was Dale Beecher. “Eh, Denise,” he stammered nervously, “something’s come up.” I held my breath, sensing that my magic was about to crumble. “My Grandmother Hansen died late Wednesday night. Her funeral’s tomorrow in Arizona. Because I was out of town yesterday to the baseball game, I didn’t find out about it until late last night.” He paused. I closed my eyes and fought back the tears. “We’re leaving this morning. I know that’s crummy, especially for prom.”
“I’m sorry,” I heard myself say, “about your grandmother.”
“Whose funeral?” Max asked, looking up from his bowl of cracked wheat cereal as I returned to the table in a dismal, disappointed daze.
“I guess I’m not going to the prom after all,” I answered.
“Huh?” Max grunted in surprise.
“Dale’s grandmother passed away,” I said, reaching for a slice of toast. “The funeral is tomorrow in Arizona.”
The rest of the day I agonized behind a facade of fake smiles and fast chatter, never mentioning to any of my friends that my prom night would never be. After school I went straight home, shut myself in my room and made a weak pretense of study, but mainly I just stared at the wall and told myself I wouldn’t cry.
A little after six there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called. Max walked in carrying a corsage in a white box. He tossed it on the bed in front of me. “There’s a flower for you,” he said gruffly.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
He cleared his throat and stuffed his fists into his pockets. “I really don’t care about the money, Denise.” He cleared his throat. “I know you want to go, and—well—you would have probably done the same for me.”
“But the flower, Max?”
“I figured I could take you—if you wanted to go. I know I’m no Dale Beecher, and you might think it’s dumb to show up to the prom with your baby brother,” the words gushed out, “but at least you’d get to see what it’s like.” He blushed. “After all, it’s your prom. You ought to at least show up.”
“But, Max.”
“Hey, if it would embarrass you, I could grease my hair back, paste on a bushy mustache and long sideburns, and wear dark glasses so no one would know who you were with.” He grinned sheepishly and dug his hands deeper into his pockets.
The tears I’d held back so well suddenly broke loose. I rushed to Max, threw my arms around him and squeezed, and this time I didn’t let him wriggle away from me.
“Now don’t go get all emotional,” he complained brusquely, trying to pull away.
I grinned through the deluge of tears. “Your asking means more than a hundred proms. But I know how you feel about proms. I won’t put you through all that.”
Max shrugged, relieved. “I figured you’d turn me down, so I have plan two.”
“Plan two?”
“All you’re doing up here is staring at the wall and trying not to bawl, so I came up to rescue you.” Before I could utter a protest, Max took me by the arm and dragged me to the kitchen where Mom, Dad, Melanie, Valerie, and Sanford were sitting around the table with a big bowl of buttered popcorn and cans of pop. He pushed me into a chair, shoved the popcorn in my direction and announced, “After tonight you’ll never want to go to a prom.”
“Where did all this come from?” I gasped.
“We’re having banana splits at midnight,” Sanford called out.
I looked at Max, who avoided my gaze. “Something tells me somebody’s not going to get a set of weights right away.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes a guy’s got to sacrifice. The others chipped in too.”
For the next two hours we forgot all about the prom and gorged ourselves on pop and popcorn. We played Uno and Rook and laughed until we were sick. I had never realized I could have so much fun with my family, especially on prom night.
At 8:30 P.M. when we were just getting ready to set up Trivial Pursuit, the doorbell rang and Sandra rushed in. “Why didn’t you tell me Dale was out of town?” she demanded. “Tami Roth just called and said he had to go to his grandmother’s funeral. Why didn’t you say something? You’ve got to go,” Sandra burst out. “You put the whole prom together.”
“But, Sandra, I don’t—”
“You don’t have time to sit around and gape,” Sandra cut in. “I’ve got a date lined up for you. Beau’s home for the weekend, and he just overheard me saying you didn’t have a date. He spoke right up and said he’d take you, that he’d love to take you. I didn’t pressure him at all. Honest!”
“You’ve got a date with Beau Baby,” Max called out, thumping the table with his hand and standing up. “You landed the big one without even trying.”
Everything was happening so quickly. A few hours earlier the prom had meant everything to me. But the last two and a half hours altered my feelings. I guess the last two weeks had changed that. I could feel tears well up in my eyes. They weren’t even tears of excitement because I could go to the prom with Beau Bentley. They were tears of joy, and I was suddenly glad about Dad’s layoff and Dale’s absence because those seemingly devastating circumstances had helped me discover my family in a way that I never had before.
“What about it, Max?” I smiled over at him. “You spoke first.”
Max took a deep breath and pondered for a moment with that teasing glint in his eye. “Well,” he drawled, “since Beau Baby’s howling at the door, I’ll back out this time.” He shrugged. “I know that will be a real step down for you, but I guess we’d better give Beau a break this time.” Sighing deeply, he dug his fists into his pockets. “I’ll even let him borrow my corsage. I doubt he thought of that.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, smiling.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll sacrifice this time. After all, I’m getting used to sacrificing now. But,” he added, raising a finger, “we will expect you home for banana splits. You can even bring Beau if you want.”
I laughed, gave him a quick hug and said, “I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Promise.” He swallowed and tried to duck his head. The Mean Max mask was gone. I saw a trace of mist in his eyes, and I knew I would be the luckiest girl at the prom, not because I was going with Beau Bentley but because I had the greatest family in the world.

And now about Ed. Ed also comes from a distant city. Ed started stealing when he was nine. He was arrested for auto theft at age thirteen, later convicted of grand larceny, and sent to prison in another state. He came to Utah, was arrested for and convicted of grand larceny again, and was sent to the Utah State Prison.
Ed became acquainted with the Church social services program conducted in the prison in much the same way as Jim. Once when Ed was on his way to one of the Church meetings, some of the prisoners ridiculed him, as only hardened convicts could. He responded that when he was on the outside he had acted as they did. Now he wanted to change and no one was going to stop him.
Ed had some particularly wonderful home teachers who occasionally brought their own children to the prison to have family home evening with him. The children consider Ed as an older brother. He considers himself a member of their family. Ed was one of those who had been released from prison and had returned to receive his certificate at the graduation exercises. He was invited to speak at the service.
As he stood at the pulpit, he took a piece of paper from his pocket. Holding it up to the audience, he said: “You probably can’t read this, but this is the most important document in my life. This is my baptismal recommend that will permit me to be baptized next Thursday.” Ed was baptized. After his confirmation, he walked over to a corner of the room where he could be alone and wept. He wept even more when he was ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood.