Gospel Story Finder

When I was a boy, at Christmastime my mother put out a picture of the Savior knocking at a door. We weren’t members of the Church yet, and I always asked myself, “Why is Jesus knocking on the door? Who is on the other side?”
A few years later I discovered there was no handle on the outside of the door the Savior was knocking on. The person on the inside needed to open the door. Now I know who is on the other side of the door. We are! The Savior is knocking, and we all have to open the door and invite Him to come into our lives.

Grandma was also incredibly patient. Many of the General Authorities were her friends and would visit her in our home. I remember when President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., would come to visit her. Because of health problems, he was not able to climb the stairs to visit Grandma, and she couldn’t come down. So she would sit in a chair at the top of the stairs while he sat at the bottom, and they would talk. While they were conversing, Rich and I would climb the stairs and slide down the banister. They never scolded us, and we had a great time.

One of the choicest examples in my personal life of “charity [that] never faileth” was manifest in the life of a close friend known to my family as Grandma Gardner. Muriel Gardner recently passed away after a courageous fight with cancer.

While this sweet lady was not directly related to us, her example of the pure love of Christ made me and my family feel that we were her own. We were prayed over, watched over, and blessed by her faith throughout the past 30 years of our lives. She always seemed to know when we were at a challenging crossroad and needed additional help or encouragement.

She would not be considered as anyone of great acclaim or importance. She did not change the world, nor was she instrumental in making any remarkable contribution to her community. Grandma Gardner was just an ordinary individual trying to live the best she knew how. It was through the latter refining months of her life that she exclaimed that she finally “got it”—meaning that she finally understood the purpose of the Atonement and Christ’s love for each of us.

Her own life was filled with trials and challenges. She bore them with dignity and thankfulness to the Lord for allowing her to be an instrument in His hands. Always a vibrant and lively person, she refused to let cancer destroy her love of the Lord. Never did she blame the Lord for the afflictions she bore. She continued to express her testimony and faith in writing—even when the cancerous growth took away her ability to speak and bear testimony vocally. She hoped that by doing so, her family and friends would be led to say that they also got it. I am grateful that the Lord placed this dear sister along my life’s path as an example to me.

Then in late June he parked his wagon in the Joseph W. Young train’s campground about two miles northwest of Florence, Nebraska. For the next two weeks Zeb was a taxi driver, taking his wagon into Florence, picking up passengers for the Young train, and shuttling them to the campground. July 5 was a typical taxi day for him: “I left camp and went to Florence, after a load of Saints. The day was very warm, and I was very tired after my day’s work.” Missouri River steamers unloaded company after company of Saints at the giant LDS campground in Florence, congesting it; “emigrants stowed away in every nook and corner,” is how Zeb described it.
On July 11 Zeb and his train pulled out and started the “back” part of the trip, 1,000 miles to Utah.
Some immigrants were troubled by the rough-looking, rough-talking Utah Boys. According to Englishman William Yates, another diarist on the trail that year, the boys looked and acted like poorly educated frontiersmen. Brother Yates, however, was fooled by appearances, for his own diary is notches below the quality of the one kept by Utah Boy Zeb Jacobs.
The immigrants learned quickly to appreciate the boys’ abilities with oxen and wagons. And they liked to see the Utah Boys do much of the wagon trains’ dirty work. Zeb and the others had to hunt for firewood and buffalo chips, build fires, track down missing cattle, set up and break camps, haul water, and spend hours in rivers helping wagons to cross. At Loup Fork crossing, for example, Zeb “had the pleasure of getting a dunking several times, helping the wagons over.” Near Fort Laramie he wrote: “I was in the water most of the afternoon helping the teams across. The weather was cold.” The boys seemed to enjoy showing off their expertise and strength, however, especially when teenage girls were watching.
The boys’ main assignment was caring for cattle and wagons—hitching, unhitching, feeding, shoeing, corralling, guarding, and mending harnesses. This work provided Zeb with some unexpected adventures. One day, according to his diary, “I was helping to shoe an ox, and witnessed the mosquitoes and horse flies driving off the horses and cattle, and in gathering the animals we kept what is called the dog-trot for about a mile. I finally caught a horse and jumped on him, and with considerable difficulty I succeeded in getting the animals back to camp.”
One night the “mules and horses took a notion they would go and accordingly they went.” The boys started in pursuit “but the night was so dark that we had to take the advantage of the lightning to tell us which way we were going.” When Zeb saw something move in the distance he tried to run to it. “At last I got lost in a swamp but managed, after much trouble, to get back to camp without finding the animals.” Next morning, on foot, the boys found the animals more than nine miles from the camp.
One night Zeb let the terrain keep the cattle from wandering: “Being on guard, I took the mules up a large ravine and stayed until midnight, then Bro. Henry Parker relieved me.”
For teenagers life can never be all hard work. The Utah Boys had fun on the trail too. One day they “caught a string of fish.” Another time they “had a family swim in the Platte.” One morning Zeb and one of the men “crossed the river and found plenty of chokecherries and currants. After satisfying our own appetites we filled our hats and pockets.” In recrossing the river “we got ducked several times, but we hung on to the fruit.” Back at camp they shared the berries and “finding breakfast ready, we ate heartily.”
On July 24, Pioneer Day, the Utah Boys decided to help the campers celebrate. With good-humored exaggeration Zeb wrote of their fun:
“We were up at daylight and called out the ‘National Guard’ [the boys] which fired a volley of musketry, and any kind of guns that were handy. Then the ‘Martial Band’ struck up ‘Hail Columbia’ (the band was composed of tin pails, pans, bake-kettle lids, bells, and various instruments of music); then there was another volley by the Guard; and at sunrise, the firing of cannon (which was about 3 inches in length), and concluded the morning performance with an Indian jig.”
That night the boys held a “grand ball” at the “Bachelors Hall,” meaning a square dance in front of their tents.
August 17 provided one of the highlights of the boys’ fun on the trail. According to Zeb: “As we woke up in the morning all hands began laughing at each other, as our faces were besmeared with tar and wagon grease. Some of the boys from the other camp had paid us a visit and left their compliments upon our faces.”
Humor also helped Zeb describe how the mosquitoes plagued them at swampy stretches of the trail. “Some of us went in the river to bathe,” he wrote once, “but we found the mosquitoes there ahead of us. They very soon got rid of us.” Another evening he said the boys were “entertained with a large and renowned band of minstrels (mosquitoes); they kept us dancing all night.”
On August 30, in the middle of Wyoming, the teenage driver received a special honor. Captain Joseph W. Young needed to rush ahead of his train to catch up with another wagon company, so he selected Zeb to drive him in a wagon pulled by mules. (Mules travel much faster than oxen.) Zeb drove as fast as he could for three days and then Captain Young, needing to travel even faster, hailed a passing stagecoach, boarded it, and left Zeb to travel alone.
Zeb liked the fast mule team which moved him 20 to 45 miles a day, double what wagon trains could cover. But driving alone on the hot, dusty trail and camping by himself at night had its lonely moments. So he enjoyed catching up to other travelers and visiting with them. Late on September 3 he overtook the Joseph Horne train “where I joined the people in that camp in a dance.” An injured man in the camp needed to be hurried to Salt Lake, so Richard Horne joined Zeb as a traveling companion, “and I was very glad of his company,” Zeb confessed.
Zeb, the teenage driver, put his mule-pulled wagon and injured passenger into Salt Lake City in near record time, arriving on September 7 at breakfast time. He beat his Joseph W. Young wagon train there by 16 days. In total, down and back, Zeb had been on the trail for 18 weeks.
It is not known if Zeb kept any diaries after 1861. He made down-and-back trips again in 1862 and 1863. In 1866, at age 24, he married. He served in the Blackhawk War as a sergeant in the cavalry. By career he became a railroad man, working as a popular conductor on the Utah Central Railroad. Late in life he became a guard at the state penitentiary. He remained a lifelong faithful Latter-day Saint.

That heritage lies in a somewhat complex story that stretches back about 20 years, to the city of Angoulême, France. There, full-time missionaries were guided to a man named Michel Menardin, who had come from Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France, to perform his military service. Michel accepted the gospel and was baptized and confirmed.
That same year in the same town, missionaries left a pamphlet in a mailbox. It triggered interest from a single mother, Claudine, who was raising a 19-year-old daughter, Delphine. They both gained testimonies and were also baptized and confirmed.
Michel and Claudine met at church, decided they were meant for each other, and married. (They are Coco’s grandparents.) When Michel’s mother, Marthé, came for the wedding, she stayed in Angoulême, became acquainted with the Church, and joined.
Later, Delphine was called on a mission to Seattle, Washington. While she was serving, her parents and grandmother moved back to Guadeloupe. After her mission, Delphine came to visit them, and while in Guadeloupe she met Claude Gamiette, who had recently returned from the Florida Jacksonville Mission. He was serving as a counselor to Delphine’s stepfather in the branch presidency. The two returned missionaries dated and were married a short time later. Claude and Delphine are Coco’s parents. Now, 14 years and five children later, Claude, whose own family goes back years in the Church, is president of the Basse-Terre Guadeloupe District.
So with all of that, Coco is a fourth-generation Latter-day Saint. “I’ve grown up in the Church,” she says. “I’ve heard about it my whole life, gone to Primary and now to Young Women, and heard my parents and their parents and their parents bear their testimonies. I’ve always known the gospel is true. When I read in Mosiah about the promises the believers made when Alma baptized them, that’s what I’ve seen and felt my whole life.”

Music has always been important to my own eight children too. When one of my four daughters was about nine or ten, we were all sitting at the kitchen table, reading the book of Mark in the New Testament. She said, “Daddy, is that where the song comes from? Could we please sing it?” We got out the hymnbooks and sang “Master, the Tempest Is Raging.” We weren’t a challenge to the Tabernacle Choir, but that hymn will never be the same again to me, because we sang it around the kitchen table.”

In 1849 two young Latter-day Saint sailors, George Barber and Benjamin Richey, neither of whom held the priesthood, sailed from Liverpool, England, to Calcutta, India. Because their ship needed repairs, it was put in dry dock, and they spent some time at a home for sailors. There they met a scripture reader named Maurice White. Their conversations with him regarding their newfound faith led them into company with a group called the Plymouth Brethren. The young sailors taught the restored gospel to their new friends, and soon several of them were converted. But because they held no priesthood authority, Barber and Richey had to leave their converts unbaptized when their ship sailed from Calcutta.

Some months later, written requests for living witnesses arrived in Liverpool from Calcutta. Church leaders decided to ask Joseph Richards, a Church member who was an elder, to visit with the Plymouth Brethren on his next trip to Calcutta. He was a sailmaker on the merchant ship Gloriosa. In June 1851, Richards met the Church’s friends in Calcutta and baptized four of them—James Patrick Meik; his wife, Mary Ann; Matthew McCune; and Maurice White. Richards ordained White an elder and called him as president of the Wanderers Branch. These new members were the first to be baptized as Latter-day Saints in all of Asia. The Wanderers Branch was the first Church unit in Asia. Richards remained in Calcutta for only two weeks and then returned with his ship to England.

When you seek after the light by surrounding yourself with positive and great individuals, you provide yourself with more opportunities to learn and grow. I have been blessed to work with so many inspiring student athletes. They continue to teach me so much, but one player truly stands out.

Many years ago we recruited a young lady who had a special talent and gift for the game. She was raised a long way from Provo, Utah, and had never really been around many Latter-day Saint players. She was also someone who was so good that she had never really been held accountable to some of our athletic standards, such as fitness tests, work rate, and being on time—or even things such as what to wear to soccer clinics and service projects. She was her own person, had her own ideas, and marched to her own drum—which was fine, but at the same time, it was holding her back from reaching her highest potential.

We did not see eye to eye on many things early on. It actually came to a point at which I had to make the decision to ask her to leave the team. She was good enough to play at other universities, and I told her I would help her find a place. However, I also mentioned that if this was where she really wanted to be and if she was willing to embrace her opportunity here and make some changes, then she would have the opportunity to join us again the following semester. After a short time she told me that she really wanted to come back and learn from all those around her.

It was not an easy journey for her, and there were many times when she knew it would be easier somewhere else. But through the struggles, the fight, the dedication, and the choices, she was able to develop, mature, and grow. She made the decision to stay and surround herself with great friends, teammates, professors, ward members, and the environment at BYU, and it ultimately led to an opportunity to change her life and her future.

One of the most rewarding and proud moments of my coaching career was to give Jenavieve Phillips a big hug on the field after her last game as a Cougar and congratulate her on an amazing journey. During her senior year she helped lead our team to a number fourteen ranking before we were knocked out of the tournament by the University of Portland, the defending national champion at that time.

What a blessing and unbelievable inspiration Jenavieve was to me, my staff, her teammates, and all those who knew her. She went on to graduate from BYU, serve a mission, and bless the lives of all those she came in contact with. She lived her life to the fullest, fulfilled her mission on this earth, and was taken home to her Heavenly Father after a car accident in 2012.

You may have had the experience of being made stronger by the people you were called to serve. I was once called as a bishop of young single adults. I am not sure whether the Lord’s purposes were more for what changes I could help Him make in them or the changes He knew they would make in me.

To a degree I do not understand, most of those young people in that ward acted as if I was called of God especially for them. They saw my weaknesses but looked past them.

I remember one young man who asked for counsel about his educational choices. He was a freshman at a very good university. A week after I had given the advice, he scheduled an appointment with me.

When he came into the office, he surprised me by asking, “Bishop, could we pray before we talk? And could we kneel? And may I pray?”

His requests surprised me. But his prayer surprised me even more. It went something like this: “Heavenly Father, You know that Bishop Eyring gave me advice last week, and it didn’t work. Please inspire him to know what I am to do now.”

Now you might smile at that, but I didn’t. He already knew what the Lord wanted him to do. But he honored the office of a bishop in the Lord’s Church and perhaps wanted me to have the chance to gain greater confidence to receive revelation in that calling.

It worked. As soon as we stood up and then sat down, the revelation came to me. I told him what I felt the Lord would have him do. He was only 18 years old then, but he was mature in spiritual years.

He already knew he didn’t need to go to a bishop on such a problem. But he had learned to sustain the Lord’s servant even in his mortal weaknesses. He eventually became a stake president. He carried with him the lesson we learned together: if you have faith that the Lord leads His Church through revelation to those imperfect servants He calls, the Lord will open the windows of heaven to them, as He will to you.

From that experience, I carried away the lesson that the faith of the people we serve, sometimes more than our own faith, brings us revelation in the Lord’s service.

There was another lesson for me. If that boy had judged me for my failure to give him good advice the first time, he never would have come back to ask again. And so, by choosing not to judge me, he received the confirmation he desired.

Yet another lesson from that experience has served me well. As far as I know, he never told anyone in the ward that I had not given good counsel at first. Had he done that, it might have reduced the faith of others in the ward to trust the bishop’s inspiration.

Once I was baptized, the Church was my world. What I loved best was to be at church with the other members. I remember many times being there on Saturdays with the deacons, cleaning the chapel and preparing it for Sunday. I also participated in the branch’s Mutual activities. From seeing the missionaries in Primary and at home, I decided early in my life to go on a mission. When I served my mission, I was very happy. I served two years in the west of Mexico.

As a teenager, I had a bad attitude. One day, I came home from seventh grade, slammed my books on the table, and began my habitual rant about the mounds of unfair homework, friends that ditched me, girls that ignored me, and the injustice of being shorter than not just the seventh graders but most of the fifth graders.
My mom unsympathetically put down her iron and replied to my complaints: “You know Blake, you can’t always choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude. And by the way, you have a list of chores you need to do before dinner.”
My mom’s words settled deep. I am not sure why, but it is as if it were the first time I had entertained the notion that I did have some control over situations that in the past left me feeling like a victim, powerless over my destiny. It was empowering.
I suddenly understood obstacles were here to stay but my attitude and how I reacted was 100 percent mine. Mom was right and at that moment I had what the Savior refers to as a change of heart.

Only a week had passed since Heather’s baptism, and she felt miserable. She could still remember the fresh, clean feeling that had warmed her as her father helped her back up the steps of the baptismal font. I want to feel this good forever, she had thought at the time. Now she wondered if that happiness would ever return.
Earlier today, with her best friend, Susan, running after her, Heather had raced up the three front steps, into the house, and straight to the family room. Even snacks couldn’t have pulled them away from their plans for the afternoon. Dad had brought home a new space video game the night before, and Heather had been anxious to show Susan how she’d mastered it already. As they had burst into the family room, Heather’s redheaded brother, Sean, was sprawled sideways in a chair, watching TV. He’d just finished gluing together a model airplane, which now rested on the small table in front of him.
“Susan and I want to play the video game now,” Heather had announced. “Will you please turn the TV off?”
“Just let me finish watching this program,” Sean had answered.
“But we can’t,” Heather had wailed. “Susan has to be home in just a few minutes.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I was here first,” Sean had said testily, “and I want to see the end of this show.”
Stiffening, Heather had said, “You always get here first; it’s not fair!” She had headed for the TV to turn it off. But before she’d gotten there, she had seen the newly completed model airplane. And before she’d thought twice about it, Heather had snatched the plane and thrown it to the floor. Bits of broken wood had flown in every direction. She hadn’t waited for Sean’s response but had grabbed Susan’s hand and said, “C’mon, let’s go.”
Now shame clutched at Heather. She longed to tell Sean that she was sorry that she had destroyed his model airplane. Apologizing wouldn’t restore it, though.
Heather couldn’t even manage her welcome smile and hug for Dad when he strolled in the front door from the office. The most she could muster was a quiet “Hi.”
Dad gave her a squeeze anyway and asked, “What’s wrong with my girl?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he asked.
Before any words could struggle out, tears spilled from Heather’s eyes. Her sobs changed to sniffles as she told the whole story. It surprised her that telling Dad helped ease some of the misery.
Dad listened until she finished. “Well,” he said calmly, “you must feel ashamed.”
Heather looked down at her knees and nodded.
“I’m disappointed in the way you’ve acted,” Dad went on, “but your feelings of shame are an important part of repentance. We can never really repent until we are sorry for what we’ve done. I can see that you really are sorry about the way that you acted. Now, what do you think you should do next?”
“I guess first I should tell Sean that I’m sorry,” Heather answered.
“I think that that is good idea. There is someone else whom you need to apologize to as well, Heather. Do you know who He is?”
“Heavenly Father. And I’ve already done that, Dad. I prayed just a little while ago and asked Him to forgive me.”
“That’s good,” Dad said. “I can see that you know a lot about repentance already. Now there’s one more important thing that you need to do.” He explained to her that she needed to make restitution by replacing Sean’s model airplane.
After apologizing to Sean, Heather went to check the contents of her bank. Three one-dollar bills were rolled and stuffed into the plastic money jar. Dad had said that it would probably cost at least five dollars to buy a new model kit, and just to make sure that she would have enough, Heather planned to earn at least three more dollars.
The next week was a busy one for Heather. She tended her younger brother whenever Mom needed her to. Mom also paid her to clean out some kitchen drawers and cupboards and to sweep the garage. Her neighbor, Mrs. Briggs, was glad to have Heather walk her dog during the week, which added to her earnings. She helped Dad, too, by raking the lawn and weeding the flower bed.
After supper on Friday she eagerly counted her money, “One, two, three, four, five, six.” She fingered the wrinkled bills carefully before returning them to the plastic jar. “… twenty, thirty, thirty-five—six dollars and thirty-five cents!” she cried triumphantly, pushing the last nickel back into the bank. With the bank held tightly in her hand, Heather ran to find her dad. He had promised to take her to buy the new airplane kit as soon as she was ready.
When they returned from the store, Heather could hardly wait to find Sean. She pulled a sack from behind her back and held it out to him. Slowly he took it from her and asked, “What’s this?”
“Just open it. You’ll see,” Heather replied.
Sean pulled the new model kit from the sack. As he reached in and pulled out a candy bar, too, Heather glowed with almost the same sensation she’d had when she’d been baptized. She felt almost like a balloon ready to pop as she watched the smile on Sean’s face widen into a grin.
“Thanks,” he said. “Want to help me make it?”

The crowd seemed to calm down suddenly as they focused their attention on the gymnastic arena. Everyone seemed to be watching the same girl—the one who had attracted their attention earlier in the balance beam competition. This time she was swinging on the uneven parallel bars.
The girl was Diane Ellingson, a typical-looking fifteen-year-old gymnast with a slim body, her hair in a blonde ponytail. But the crowd seemed to sense that there was more to her than her good looks.
Maybe they noticed her because of the confident way she performed her pirouettes during her floor routine. It could have been the spectacular twists and turns she executed when she flipped from the uneven parallel bars. It might have been her effortless leaps over the vault, but above all that, it was probably her genuine love for the crowd. They could feel it when she flashed them that winning smile at the end of a perfect routine.
Of course, even when her performance wasn’t quite so perfect there was still something about that smile. Even when she slipped and landed flat on her face at the end of a routine while being filmed on national television, she smiled and waved to the crowd until they applauded. In a competition on her eighteenth birthday she told the judges it was her birthday so they would ask the crowd to sing “Happy Birthday” to her. “I wasn’t embarrassed,” says Diane. “I would’ve let them sing it twice just for the attention.”
Even as a child, Diane loved to have an audience. Once when she was nine or ten years old she didn’t come home from school when she was supposed to, so her father went looking for her. He found her in the center of a circle of children, entertaining them with her tumbling tricks just for fun.
Diane’s sister Marie laughs at the memory of Diane as a child performer. “If you ever see our family photographs, she’s always out in front. She was just always a show-off. Dad would be photographing someone else and Diane would get in the picture somehow.”
The desire to perform fit perfectly into gymnastics, another of Diane’s lifelong loves. It was hard to convince her parents that gymnastics was a good thing for her, and even then she had to do something more.
“Our family had seven children and couldn’t afford to pay for Diane to have lessons. She went down to the gymnasium herself and told the coach that she’d do anything for them. So after practice sessions she’d clean the gymnasium—vacuuming mats, cleaning bathrooms, whatever, to pay for her lessons,” says Marie.
Diane’s love of the spotlight was quickly matched by her gymnastic ability, and the two made a championship combination. She started training when she was fourteen and a half years old, a late start by competitive standards, but within a year she was competing against the best in the country. She was the Junior Olympic National Champion in high school, and in college she led the University of Utah’s women’s gymnastics team to their first national victory.
After she was no longer eligible for college competition, she decided to go on a national professional tour. Diane knew her gymnastics career was mostly over, but she just wanted to hold on to the thrill of the spotlight and the fun of the sport for as long as she could.
During training for the tour Diane was practicing a vault she’d done thousands of times. She ran toward the vault just like she had done every other time. She jumped on the springboard like all the other times and flew up and over the vault—just like all the other times. But this time was different. This time she turned her body just a little too far. This time when she landed, she broke her neck. The accident put her in the hospital for almost six months and in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
That was on December 15, 1981. Diane spent that Christmas and the next five months in the hospital, trying to imagine her life without gymnastics. After so many years of loving the sport, it was difficult for Diane to adjust.
“I hated being in the hospital, and I felt like I was in prison,” says Diane. For one month of the five she was in the hospital, she was in traction and couldn’t move at all except when the nurses came in and turned her a few centimeters every two hours. Diane had no idea she’d be in the hospital for so long. “In fact, when I was first injured I thought for sure that in a month I’d be back on the tour. I thought, ‘If I have enough faith and believe in God and in myself, I’ll be okay.’ And I just knew it.”
Recovery wasn’t quite so easy though, and things seemed to get worse. “I was a horrible patient,” says Diane. “In the hospital I was really miserable because I was so restless. I was really impatient with people.” Finally Diane came to a turning point.
“One day I was in the depths of despair. I just felt like I couldn’t bear it anymore,” Diane says. She asked for a priesthood blessing. She knew the power to heal her was present, “but I only wanted that to happen if it was Heavenly Father’s will. I had this blessing and I felt the greatest sense of peace. It was like I knew that no matter what happened it would be okay. If I didn’t walk away from the hospital there would be a reason for it. I knew that I had always tried my best to live the gospel and do what I was supposed to do, so if anybody was worthy to have that blessing, I was. But from that point on I was a different person. I was totally comforted.”
Ironically, one of the biggest aids to her recovery was gymnastics. “I don’t know if I could’ve gotten up again if I hadn’t had that training in gymnastics,” she says. “I had a lot of serious injuries when I was a gymnast that I just had to deal with. It was always down, up, down, up in gymnastics and this was just one more down I had to get up from. Gymnastics taught me to get back up so I could be a champion again.”
On the day she finally realized she would never walk again, Diane made the decision to return to school to work for her degree. She was lying on her bed with all her scrapbooks filled with souvenirs and photos of her performances. Tears dripped down her face and splashed on the scrapbook pages. “I just realized right then that things weren’t going to get any better. As I lay there crying I thought, ‘I can either give up or get on with my life’ and that’s when I decided to go back to school and get my degree.”
Now Diane teaches a class full of seven-year-olds who are just the right height to look her in the eye. “The kids will do anything for her,” says Marie. “They just love her.”
Her students aren’t her only fans. Diane also gives fireside talks to teenagers who listen intently as she tells her story. And her message is one of hope and perseverance, without bitterness for what has happened.
Her personality hasn’t changed at all. Just listen to her speak and you’ll hear the exuberant, happy girl who used to charm arenas full of people. Now her charm is just aimed at another audience. Her voice seems to smile at every person in the room and her own laughter frequently interrupts her stories.
“I think telling my gymnastics stories and sharing my experiences opens up the communication between us. They soon forget that I’m in a wheelchair. When they do that, the youth can see that I’m just a regular person and we have a lot in common, even though, in a wheelchair, I look a lot different than they do,” Diane says.
Her main message is one for potential champions: don’t give up, no matter what happens. “When I was a young gymnast I met a girl, an athlete named Nancy Thies. Nancy was a member of the U.S. Olympic team and one of the finest gymnasts in the country. I have never forgotten some very important things that Nancy taught me. I remember the first thing she said was, ‘Don’t be afraid to lose.’ She said, ‘If you fall down and you stay down, you’re a quitter and a loser and you will never win. But if you get back up and you try one more time, it will be your turn to be the champion, so just don’t give up.’” Diane says she made a promise to herself that she would remember that advice and never give up, no matter how many times she fell.
Once she faced the hardest fall of her life, not giving up was difficult, especially because of her wheelchair. The entire time she was a gymnast, whether she was swinging high above the uneven parallel bars of just doing handstands for fun, her only fear was of being blind or paralyzed. “I had such uneasy feelings about wheelchairs that I would never talk to anybody in a wheelchair or go near a wheelchair. I would avoid people in wheelchairs. I was afraid that I’d end up in a wheelchair if I got too close to one. It was almost like having thought about it so much somehow prepared me for a wheelchair,” she says.
It was probably Diane’s unconquerable spirit that prepared her more than anything else. It’s a spirit that is evident in both her funny stories and her powerfully quiet testimony about the importance of an eternal perspective and God’s love for each of his children. It’s a spirit that Diane has always had. “I’ve never met anyone, except my father, who has a stronger testimony than she does,” says Marie. “There’s no doubt in her mind that what she’s doing is right and that the Church is true. She has always been a great example.”
The lights are turned down in the room as she finishes her message, and a slide show featuring Diane, the fun-lover and gymnast, lashes on the screen in time to some fast, contemporary music. When the presentation is over, young people surround her excitedly.
Diane says, “It makes me feel really good when people tell me they’re going to try harder after they’ve heard my talk. One girl came to me once and told me she’d heard me speak four different times. The first time, she decided not to commit suicide. The second time, she decided that she didn’t have to drop out of school. The third time, she made a goal to become one of the best students in her class, and the last time she was on her way to that goal.”
Diane just shrugs her shoulders and laughs a little when someone tells her she’s wonderful. She even looks a little embarrassed, which is rare for this experienced performer. “People always think, ‘You’re so amazing, you’re so incredible,’ but I’m not. People will say, ‘If that happened to me I could never handle the situation,’ and the thing I have to say is, ‘Either you handle the situation or you die.’ You have to take whatever life gives you and deal with it, even if you might not want to. You know, if somebody dies in your family, you have to live with it. If you break your neck you have to live with it, but you just learn and that’s what’s so great about time and the healing process. You don’t have to be miraculous.”
You just have to be as willing as Diane was to get up again, so that someday it will be your turn to be the champion. For Diane, the victory is especially sweet, because she has won back what she thought she’d lost.
She is a champion again.

Eight feet dragged downstairs to Mom’s sewing room. “Mom,” said Johnny, as he, Benjamin, Katie, and Miriam opened the door, “we’re bored. What can we do?”
“Go swimming?” Mom answered.
“We did that yesterday,” said Katie.
“Why don’t you ride your bikes?” suggested Mom.
“We did that this morning,” Johnny answered.
Mom smiled. “Then catch some monkeys.”
“What?” Benjamin jumped.
Mom laughed. “I just wanted to see if you were listening.”
“Sure we’re listening,” said Benjamin. “We don’t have anything else to do.”
“OK,” said Mom, “how about having a Popsicle race?”
“A Popsicle race?” Miriam asked.
“You mean, see who can eat one the fastest?” asked Katie. “We always race each other in everything. We want to do something different.”
“Oh, this is different,” Mom said. “Eating the Popsicles is just the first part. The fun part comes when all you have left are the sticks.”
The children frowned. “What do you mean?” asked Benjamin.
“Here’s how it works,” Mom explained. “Everybody gets a Popsicle and goes in a different direction. Then you have to think of an unusual and interesting thing to do with your Popsicle or its stick. It’s a race because you have to be back here within an hour.”
“You mean, we try to do something with a Popsicle or the stick that we’ve never done before?” asked Johnny.
“That’s right.” Mom nodded. “And there’s one more rule. Whatever you do must make someone else happy. Whoever comes up with the best idea wins. How does that sound?”
The children looked at each other for a moment. “I think that it sounds like fun,” Benjamin said.
“Me, too,” Miriam and Johnny agreed.
“Let’s go!” shouted Katie, and eight feet pounded up the stairs toward the freezer.
A few minutes later Mom looked through the window and smiled at four excited children with four brightly colored Popsicles dashing off in four different directions.
Nearly an hour had passed before Benjamin came running downstairs, grinning. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Anyone else back yet?”
“You’re the first,” Mom answered, looking out the window. “But here comes Johnny, and Katie is right behind him. And I see Miriam down the street.”
Within minutes the children all gathered in the sewing room. The girls were laughing, and Johnny was so excited that he could hardly stand still. “I did it!” he said. “Let me tell first!”
“No!” shouted the girls. “We want to tell!”
“Hush, now,” Mom said. “You can tell your Popsicle stories in the order of your return. Benjamin, that means that you’re first.”
“OK,” said Benjamin, jumping up. “Well, I ate my Popsicle while walking down the sidewalk and trying to think of something to do. When it was gone, I sat down on the curb to think some more. I was sitting across from Mrs. Taylor’s house. I remembered about Mr. Taylor dying last year and about Mom and Dad saying what a hard time Mrs. Taylor’s been having trying to do everything by herself. I wished that I could help her. Then I noticed that her garden patch was full of weeds—and I got my idea. I went over and asked Mrs. Taylor if it was all right, then used my stick as a tool to dig weeds out of her garden!”
Mom hugged Benjamin. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “What a great idea! I know that it made Mrs. Taylor very happy.”
“My turn!” Johnny called, jumping up and down.
“Yes, Johnny,” said Mom. “What did you do with your Popsicle?”
“First I ate it.” Johnny giggled, showing his red tongue. “And I had to think for a while to get an idea too. As I was thinking, somebody called to me. It was Jeffrey—the boy in my class who has to stay in a wheelchair. He was on the porch of his house and asked me to come over. He seemed pretty sad. I thought that if summer vacation gets boring for me, it must really get boring for him: no bike riding, no baseball, no swimming. So when I went over to his house, I knew what I was going to do with my stick. His mom got me a piece of heavy paper and a pin, and I folded a paper airplane. Then I worked the pin through the middle of the Popsicle stick and stuck it into the nose of the airplane to make a propeller. I gave it to Jeffrey, and do you know what? Even though he has some pretty neat toys, he thought the airplane was great.”
“And you’re pretty great, too,” said Mom. “Good job!”
“I came back next,” said Katie. “Does my idea count even if the someone I made happy wasn’t a person?”
“I don’t see why not,” answered Mom.
“OK. Then I can tell you. After I ate my Popsicle, I ran over to Mrs. King’s house. Her yard is full of things for birds, and I wanted to see if there were any hummingbirds at her feeder. There weren’t, but I saw two sparrows having trouble eating from the seed bell that hangs in the tree. There weren’t any branches close enough for them to sit on while they ate, and they were too small to reach the bell from the branch it hung on. So I asked Mrs. King for two pieces of string. I tied a piece to each end of my Popsicle stick and tied the other ends of the strings to a branch. Now the stick hangs next to the seed bell, and it’s a perch for the birds to sit on while they eat!”
“Terrific!” exclaimed Mom. “But I know someone you made happy besides the birds: Mrs. King. Now there will be more birds for her to watch. You did very well.” Mom turned to Miriam. “Now it’s your turn, honey.”
Miriam looked at the floor. “I think I goofed,” she said. “I didn’t come up with a good idea like the others.”
“I’m sure you did fine,” Mom said. “Please tell us what you did.”
“Well, I didn’t eat my Popsicle,” began Miriam. “I saw Tony on his front porch. I said, ‘Hi,’ but he didn’t say anything. Then I remembered that he had his tonsils taken out Monday. That really makes your throat hurt. So I gave my Popsicle to him, and I sat by him and told him stories and jokes until I saw everyone else coming back here. When I left, he still didn’t say anything, but he smiled.”
“Miriam,” said Mom, kissing her, “that was a good idea. You made someone just as happy as Benjamin and Johnny and Katie did. In fact, now we have a problem.”
“What?” asked the children.
“I don’t think I can decide which idea was best. They were all wonderful.”
The children looked at each other. They were smiling. “That doesn’t matter, Mom,” answered Benjamin. “I think we each got a prize anyway. We all feel great!”
And eight feet skipped up the stairs and outside to play.

It’s 8:30 on a brisk Monday morning at the Harvard Business School. A wind that blows in off the Charles River hustles red, orange, and yellow leaves as they chase each other around the ivy-laden brick buildings. Students of all colors and sizes hurry to their classes, the difficulty of the material they studied the night before imprinted on their faces.
Once inside the classroom they place their name cards in front of them, arrange their notes, and chatter nervously. Who will be called on to open class, they wonder, hoping against hope that it won’t be them.
“Mr. Fullmer,” barks the teacher. “I believe it is your lucky day. You will open, please.”
Greg Fullmer leans forward, fingers his notes and begins. He is prepared. He should be. He was up until 2:00 A.M. poring over the text. Greg has to stay up studying a little later than most students because he has so many additional responsibilities. Last year he was elected to serve as the Harvard Business School’s student body president—the first Latter-day Saint to hold that position. School officials and students alike say he is one of the best they’ve ever had—that he did more in the first two months he was in office than most presidents ever do in an entire year. The six-foot-two, broad-shouldered former BYU student body president finishes his statement, and a number of hands shoot up. The discussion has begun.
Fifteen years ago, if you had told that 12-year-old farm boy from Rexburg, Idaho, that he would someday be a student body president of one of the most prestigious schools in the country, he probably would have smiled. Not laughed, mind you, because he always did believe that if your desires are righteous and if you’re willing to pay the price, you can accomplish what you want to. No, he would have smiled because you had just given him a new goal to work toward.
But then again, at that point in Greg’s life, you probably would have laughed right out loud when you tried to picture him as the handsome Harvard student who has a number of major corporations trying to recruit him. Greg was short, overweight, asthmatic, and not exactly what you’d call an academic standout. And although he was good-natured and had a positive disposition, he was no angel either.
“He was always teasing his sister and doing something to get you aggravated,” his grandmother, Loah Anderson will tell you. “I laugh with him now about it though, and tell him that if I had ever caught him, he wouldn’t be where he is today.”
His grade school bus driver would agree. Not long ago, he stopped Greg in church and said “You know, Greg, you’ve restored my faith in the youth of today.”
“How’s that?” asked Greg, flattered but slightly puzzled.
“You used to be the rottenest kid I knew,” the bus driver replied. “I just hated to see you get on that bus. But now I know that if you can make it, anyone can.”
Greg really wasn’t a troublemaker. He just liked to interact with people, and he was naturally curious. “We’d take him to a cafe,” his grandmother says, “and the kid would be up and out in a second. He wouldn’t sit at the table. He’d be over with the hostess, talking to the waitresses; then he’d go back into the kitchen to see what was cooking.”
Through most of Greg’s teenage years, he was six to eight inches shorter than his sister—his younger sister. She is 14 months his junior. In junior high school, he got along well with the other kids, but no one took him that seriously. “I ran for student body president in junior high and suffered a miserable defeat,” he said. “I didn’t even make it into the primaries, and that really hurt.”
So what motivated Greg to keep trying? How did he finally end up in the top student leadership position at Harvard Business School?
Well, you could say it was faith. Faith in the Lord, faith in himself, and the faith that his family showed in him.
Greg didn’t come from what most people would call the ideal, stereotypical family background. But he’ll tell you it was ideal for him. His parents were divorced before he was two, and he, along with his mother and his sister, moved in with his grandparents. Instead of lamenting the fact that he comes from a “broken home,” Greg makes the best of it. “I always felt like I had to excel to make up for not having a dad, so actually, it was kind of good for me,” he says. Besides, “it was like having the love and support of three parents, not just two.” His mother had to work during the day but made sure that when she came home she spent plenty of quality time with her children.
From his mother, Greg learned to listen to people, to understand their needs, and to try to help them. This became one of his greatest assets as he served in various student-government positions. From his grandmother he learned that you can achieve almost anything you want in life if you’re willing to work hard. He attributes his greatest achievements to that conviction, including funding his mission with the money he earned by opening a number of weight control centers in various parts of the country. From his grandfather, Greg learned patience and wisdom. “He didn’t have a formal education, so he’d get up early every morning and read books,” Greg relates. “He’s one of the most intelligent people I know.” Under that inspiration, Greg went from being an average student in junior high to being class valedictorian at BYU.
When Greg was 12, his family went through another change. After much deliberation, his mother decided to remarry, and although there was occasional strain, Greg adapted quite well to his new father, brothers, and sisters.
While other boys were out playing little league baseball, Greg spent a lot of time working on the family farm, milking and feeding cows, cleaning out the milk tank, you name it. He doesn’t regret the time spent—it taught him to work hard. But he won’t tell you he loved it either, although he did have a number of ways to make the long, tedious hours go by faster. He took great pride in trying to do the best job he possibly could. If he was working with others, he would talk to them, laugh with them, joke with them, and get to know them better. And then, when he had a spare second, he would dream about what he would try to accomplish in the future.
“I wasn’t the most athletic kid in the school, I wasn’t the most intelligent, and I certainly wasn’t the best looking, so I decided I’d try to be the friendliest,” he said. “One way to feel good about yourself is to make other people feel good about themselves.”
Included in his dreams was a desire to be a student body president. He got over his miserable junior high defeat and decided that he would run when he got to high school. But just a short time before he was to announce his candidacy, his best friend told him he’d decided to run and asked Greg to be his campaign manager. Greg complied and helped him win, deciding that he could run for the office when he got to Ricks College.
But when Greg got to Ricks, he decided to sacrifice his political ambitions in favor of serving a mission in Indonesia. “I had a lot of misconceptions about the mission field,” he admits. “When you hear missionaries come back and say those were the best two years of their lives, you think it’s going to be all roses, but it’s not. It’s the hardest thing you could possibly do, and that’s what makes it great. I really learned to appreciate things I had to work for and sacrifice for. I learned to accept, appreciate, and love people who were different from me.”
When Greg returned from his mission, he finished up at Ricks, then went on to BYU. He never had satisfied his dream of becoming a student body president, but the thought of presiding over BYU’s 27,000 students seemed overly ambitious to him. His sister Kristie was convinced he could do it though. She helped him find a running mate, served as his campaign manager, and after a lot of hard work, Greg was elected by one of the biggest margins in BYU history.
“That really helped prepare me for where I am now,” Greg says. And actually, he is quite surprised to be in this position at Harvard. He’d already satisfied his goal of serving as a student body president, and knowing how many hours he’d put into the position at BYU, he didn’t think he could handle it at graduate school. After much prayer and a lot of requests from fellow students, however, Greg decided to give it a try. A lot of hard work went into that election too, and it paid off.
Even though Greg has won a multitude of other awards and titles, he feels that some of his greatest satisfaction comes when his accomplishments put him in a position to answer questions about the Church. “I’m constantly being questioned about our beliefs,” he says with a smile. “And I’m always happy to talk with anyone.”
And they’re usually happy to listen. Fellow students scrutinize Greg a little closer than they do other classmates. Not only is he their president, but he’s also one of a handful of LDS people they might know.
Tomorrow he’ll probably be walking Wall Street, but today, on the brisk Monday afternoon, his class discussions are finished and he walks over to one of the numerous meetings he has each week. Many students call out to him, greeting him by name. Some glance at him with a mischievous look in their eyes and call out, “Hi, LARRY!” That’s Greg’s first name, but he hates to be called that and they know it. On the first day of class this year, the student body gave him a standing ovation and shouted out, “Larry! Larry! Larry!” It’s impossible to take yourself too seriously with classmates like that.
Still, many of them ask him how he’s accomplished what he has. “My theory of success,” he tells them, “requires two things—that you work hard, and that you pray hard.” Greg slides into his seat at the head of a large conference table, and the other student body officers begin to file in. He is prepared. He should be. He was up until 2 A.M. making use of his theory of success.

Pedro Rodiguez knew that he wanted to serve a mission even before he was baptized. Of his conversion, he said, “I was invited to a Church activity with some friends, and was really impressed. I began reading the scriptures on my own, and I knew I wanted to be a missionary and share what those books contained with everyone else. I was baptized soon after that, and now I’m looking forward to serving a mission.”

I would like to close with one more little parable that demonstrates how accepting differences and living in harmony can bless our lives.
Once upon a time, and not so very long ago either, there grew a daisy in a hidden valley. This daisy wasn’t so very different from other flowers except for one thing. He was very lonely because there were no other flowers in the valley. Every night, he looked up at the moon and stars and wondered if maybe somewhere in the big world outside there wasn’t a pretty red rose that could keep him company.
One day, the daisy felt very strange, as if something wonderful was about to happen. As he was gazing up into the sky, he saw a small pure - white seed floating down toward him. The seed soon disappeared into the ground next to him. The daisy was quite confused and perplexed at this happening. However, the next day, something wonderful had happened. Where the seed had fallen, a beautiful red rose had grown. The daisy could see that this rose was a little different from the other roses he had heard about. First, this rose had no thorns. Also, it was just a bit more beautiful.
Now the daisy was very, very happy because the rose had come to keep him company. Soon their roots began to intertwine and after a while it was hard to tell that they were two different flowers. Sometimes, when the sun was too hot, the rose began to wither, but the daisy shaded her with his leaves. And when the rain beat down and the daisy began to lose his petals, the rose protected him with her red petals.
And so it was. All the weeds in the valley died in time . . . but the daisy and the rose lived on together in eternal happiness.

Let me share one of our family secrets, found in this family photo taken some years ago, before the advent of social media. Were this taken today, it likely would be posted, presenting a family of four lovely, color-coordinated, well-behaved boys enjoying a harmonious family photo opportunity together. Would you like the real story?

I still remember the phone call from my wife. “Gary, where are you? We’re here at the photographer’s outdoor studio. We’re all ready to shoot. It hasn’t been easy getting the boys all dressed, coordinated, and ready. Are you nearly here?”

Well, I had forgotten and hadn’t left the office yet! I was half an hour late, and things had not gone so well in my absence, bordering on chaos.

What had happened? Well, my oldest son had been running through the yard and had found an apple tree, picked some apples, and begun throwing them at the other boys. He hit our third son in the back with an apple and made him fall down, and so he started to cry.

Meanwhile, as that was happening, my second son sat down and his pants went up a little bit. The other kids saw that his socks were white athletic socks, not the church socks his mother had laid out for him to wear. She asked him, “Why didn’t you wear your church socks?”

He said, “Well, I don’t like them. They’re scratchy.”

And while she’s talking to him, our two-year-old son was running through the yard, tripped on something, fell down, and bloodied his nose. Now there is blood dripping onto his white turtleneck shirt, and it’s stained. This is when I showed up. The only way to salvage the picture was to reverse the turtleneck and put it on backward, hiding the blood stains from the camera.

As it turns out, while our oldest son was running around and throwing apples, he fell down and got a large grass stain on his knee. So, in the picture, his arm is strategically placed, covering up the grass stains.

As for our third son, we had to wait for 20 minutes so his eyes were no longer red from crying.

And, of course, the bloodstains are now on the back of our youngest son’s shirt.

Now, our second son has his hands placed strategically over the top of his white athletic socks so that everything matches.

As for me, I am now in the “doghouse” because it was my late arrival that was the trigger for all of this.

So, when you see this beautiful picture of our family and lament, “Why can’t we get things together and be a picture-perfect family like theirs?” you all know better!

Several years ago, we lived in the suburbs of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. On one beautiful Sunday afternoon, we decided to take our family out to a known footpath that would lead up to the Brisbane Temple. We drove with our five young children to the Brisbane CBD where the large Brisbane River winds through its center. At one point, the river has carved out beautiful and dramatic cliffs. Wonderful for rappelling and climbing, the Kangaroo Point Cliffs are a famous attraction right in Brisbane’s busy downtown waterway.
We drove down the hill toward the water’s edge and parked near the base of these cliffs. Then we pleasantly strolled through a park over to the side of the cliffs where a paved footpath was built to lead those from the bottom of the cliffs to the top. As we made our way there, our eyes wandered to what lay across the wide river: a stunning view of skyscrapers and high rises. We followed those along with our eyes until the buildings dipped down and gave way to a brush of trees and bamboo directly opposite us. We knew that brush made up the Brisbane Botanical Gardens.
Taking in deep breaths of the vegetation drenched in a recent shower, we turned to our object, and maneuvered around the railing of the path to begin what we anticipated to be a spiritual and happy time together.
We had taken only a few steps onto the trail when a blaring electric guitar, and muffled talking over a microphone, sounded. Startled, we looked back in the direction of the sound, only to see the dense brush of the botanical gardens across the river. It occurred to us that in the amphitheater of the gardens, hidden from view, a concert was starting.
As we took more steps, drums and yells echoed across the water and bounced loudly off the nearby cliffs. Rounding a bend, we slowly ascended the first switchback. Deep screams and growls from the amphitheater began to cloud our thinking and made it difficult to have conversation. But, with good faith and optimism we determined to cheerfully go on—perhaps, wishfully thinking the heavy metal concert would end soon.
On we pressed, but as we did, so did the concert. We continued through several more switchbacks. The deafening sounds of the concert continued. I began to feel annoyance, even frustration. Why was this happening? How could other’s choices have this much influence and distraction over mine?
The trail was now getting steeper and we gripped the metal railing for support. As we went up, the volume of the concert also seemed to climb. It now became difficult to think of anything else. Occasionally, after traversing steep sections, we would pause to catch our breath and have a look at the views. The skyline was beginning to grey against the lowering sun.
Our eyes penetrated the dark and deep water that was now so far below. A memory came to my mind: another day we had floated that river together on a hot afternoon. The guide of our tour boat had taught us about the danger of the river due to bull sharks that swam up from the nearby harbor. Because of the ocean’s backflows, that dark river water was actually salty.
Up again we went. Tired from both the climbing and the jarring music, our optimism was fading. We tried to enjoy each other and the hike, but the screams and language worsened with each of the rock band’s numbers. Now, unable to hear each other, we quietly hiked along with our children. The views were beautiful, but the noises seemed to block the Spirit and any feelings of peace. Our pleasant time together was being ruined.
Presently, a thought came to me: “Isn’t this life? Is this not the vision of Lehi?” I considered the screeching heavy metal which seemed to be mocking us all the way. I looked again at the deep and dangerous river and glanced up at the “great and spacious” buildings on the other side. I felt the “rod” there, cold in my hands, protecting me and my family from a great fall (see 1 Nephi 8).
Several more minutes went by. I guess these thoughts were consoling me. Life is not meant to be perfect. Maybe its imperfections are the very things we need to become perfect.
I watched my tennis shoes plant on each narrow step. And then one of the most empowering, and loving impressions came over me: this music may be annoying, the yells were too, but they were not stopping us from putting one foot in front of another. Nor were the voices and sways of the world. They, in themselves had absolutely no power, because we were giving them none. We were free to act for ourselves!
I began to hike with a new determination.
How many times since have I heard the screams of close family members and friends walking and laughing away from the Church and into forbidden roads, beckoning me to follow? How many temptations, burdens, or feelings have I experienced which made the way difficult to see or the gospel extremely hard to focus on? At times, these noises have even blocked my ability to feel the Spirit.
But no matter the racket, how heavy the burden, or how dark or confusing the feeling, nothing has been successful in stopping me from walking step-by-step with the Lord back to His house. Exercising faith and repentance, we constantly move forward.
As dusk settled on us that evening in Brisbane, we all smiled together for a photo while shouts and guitars swirled in our ears. But in the background of that photo stood the temple. We had made it!

Sofía woke up early. Today was very special. She was going to sell lemonade at her aunt and uncle’s garage sale! Mamá made a huge jug of lemonade for her.
Sofía made a sign. She wrote “Lemonade!” in orange and yellow letters. She taped it to a little table. Then she sat down to wait.
Soon a man came by. “May I have a cup?” he asked. He put some pesos in her jar.
“Sure!” Sofía said. She poured him a cup of lemonade
Little by little, people came to look at the garage sale. And little by little they bought the yummy lemonade. The morning passed happily. Soon all of the lemonade was gone.
Sofía shook her jar. The pesos jingled. She had so many!
“Good job!” Papá said.
Sofía had never had so much money before. “I’m going to buy a yo-yo!”
Papá smiled. “Do you know what Mamá and I do when we earn money?”
Sofía shook her head.
“We pay tithing,” Papá said. “Heavenly Father gave us everything. He asks that we give Him a little part back. We pay tithing because we love Him.”
Sofía smiled. She wanted to show Heavenly Father that she loved Him too.
Papá helped Sofía count her pesos. Whenever she counted to 10, she put one peso in an envelope. Papá helped her write numbers on a little white paper. They put the paper in the envelope with the pesos. Then they sealed it shut. Sofía was going to give it to the bishop tomorrow at church.
“How do you feel?” Papá asked Sofia.
“So happy! And I still have money for a yo-yo.” She felt Heavenly Father was happy with her choice.