Gospel Story Finder

When Carol first searched for her ancestors 50 years ago—it was difficult and expensive, especially when looking for English relatives while she was living in Australia. FamilySearch has been such a blessing to her; no need now to sit and read microfilms to search out her family.
“I can remember the thrill I felt when I saw a copy of the original marriage certificate of my grandfather on a microfilm and saw his signature and that of my grandmother. I’m sure that my grandad would never have thought that one day his granddaughter would be sitting at a microfilm reader looking at that same certificate image from faraway Australia.”

As a young college student, Giuseppe Pasta found his belief in God constantly challenged by atheistic friends. He began intensive study of the Bible to strengthen his beliefs, and his study did indeed bring Giuseppe closer to God. But it also convinced him that the church of his forefathers was somehow incomplete. In it, he had learned basic moral principles, but he felt there must be more to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Where was this additional truth?
When his prayers for further enlightenment seemed to go unanswered, he concluded that perhaps he was not righteous enough. He sought to humble himself in service to patients at a charity hospital, where “I found what the pure love of Christ is.”
Then one day he met two Latter-day Saint missionaries “street-boarding” (explaining the gospel with portable displays) outside the hospital. That meeting led, after a long period of study, to his conversion but he did not tell his family at first about his baptism.
When they learned of it, they were devastated. Friends presented him a petition, with hundreds of signatures, begging him to come back to the “true church.” An interview was arranged for him with the cardinal of Turin, in the hope that the cleric could persuade him to change his mind. They became friends. Convinced at length that young Giuseppe was sincere in his beliefs, the cardinal counseled him to be true to them.
Giuseppe Pasta has been a member of the Church for twenty years now, long enough to qualify him as a Latter-day Saint pioneer in Italy. He was an executive with the Fiat corporation for seventeen years before he was hired to open the Church’s first regional office in Italy. As a temple sealer, he has had the privilege of uniting many of his countrymen for eternity in the Swiss Temple. Currently president of the Italy Rome Mission, he directs some 150 young missionaries in bringing gospel truths to other Italians.
Like President Pasta, many Italian Latter-day Saints reordered their lives to join the Church after discovering gospel truths they had not known existed. Like him, many of them are pioneers in their families and in their country.

Service has been a part of gospel teachings from the very beginning. From Adam to the present, we have been encouraged to serve our fellowmen. I had the privilege of witnessing a real fulfillment of Paul’s counsel to the Galatians when he instructed them, “by love serve one another.”
When our family was living in Massachusetts, we had our home in the little country town of Weston, about 13 miles west of Boston. It was a very quaint, sophisticated community with a population then of about 11,000 people. Weston had many picturesque, winding country roads lined with hand-fashioned rock walls. The small business section was completely deserted by 9:00 P.M. each evening. Yet for all its quaintness, Weston had its problems, especially with many of the high school and junior high students who used drugs and brought liquor into the dry town.
However, I would like to tell you about one Weston High School student who was too busily engaged in other pursuits to become involved with drugs or alcohol. This young man spent a lot of time on the ski slopes. Being an avid skier in New England is not unusual, but what this boy did with his talent is unusual. He was an expert skier and loved the sport. In fact, he was an instructor and spent even his spare time teaching others to ski. You could regularly see him coming down the mountainside very close to one of his pupils, who was oftentimes years older than he. They would start slowly but gather speed as they made graceful turns down the slope, all the time carrying on a conversation, laughing, enjoying the invigorating air and the sparkling sunshine. Observers would take note and follow the pair with their eyes until they reached the bottom, regarding them as just two more skiers having a great time.
What the onlookers did not realize was that one of the skiers was blind. This young Weston High School student was teaching the blind to ski. He did it free of charge. When he first had the idea, he discussed it with others and was advised by all to forget it. He was told over and over that it would simply be impossible.
But this young man had witnessed the hopelessness of some of the blind people and wanted to share with them one of the pleasures of his life. He wanted them to have a feeling of accomplishment and success. He wished to give them a new dimension to their lives. He wanted them to feel that they were real, whole individuals. He really cared. He cared enough to devote the time necessary to develop a rapport of love, encouragement, and understanding with these people to help them build faith in themselves and in their own abilities. Gradually mutual friendships blossomed.
These blind people placed their trust in this young man. He was their friend. He was the only one they would permit to put on their boots and snap them into their bindings. In their training, he said that helping them develop an attitude of trust and faith in themselves was the important thing. After that, the technique would come easily.
The last I heard, he had been successful in teaching 13 blind people to ski and was in the process of teaching more. He had even been requested to write a manual on teaching the blind to ski. He possessed then, and I am sure he still does, the confidence which comes with success. But more importantly, he has developed lasting friendships and has learned how to love and share through worthwhile service.
It is an eternal truth that the greatest satisfaction we find in this life is not that which is done for self but that which is given for the benefit of another. As this young man from Weston found fulfillment in his service to the blind, so each of us can find the rewarding satisfaction which comes when we “by love serve one another.”

Time to pick your amigo secreto*! You’ll give a gift to the person you choose. But do not tell them until Christmas!
Hmm. What can I give to Margo? Maybe a stuffed animal.
And I’ll be extra nice to her! That would be a good gift for Jesus too.
The next few weeks …
On Christmas Eve …
Here, Margo! I was your amigo secreto.
Really? You were mine too!
Thanks! I love it! And thanks for being so nice to me.
Thanks for being the best sister ever!
Feliz Natal!
Illustrations by Katie McDee

As a young stake president, I met many of the General Authorities when they came to speak at our stake conference. What a wonderful experience! President Hugh B. Brown came to one of our stake conferences just a week before he was called and sustained as a member of the Council of the Twelve. We enjoyed his warm spirit and his good humor. As I helped him put his coat on and walked out to his car with him, I said, “Elder Brown, do you have any personal advice for me?”
His answer was, “Yes. Follow the Brethren.” He did not choose to elaborate or explain, but he left that powerful message: Have the simple faith to follow the Brethren.

Samu, a ten-year-old African boy, walked slowly down the village farm road. He smacked at the hedge with every step, trying to spear a leaf on the pointed tip of his msasa stick.
When he finally reached the gate in the hedge, he paused hopefully. Then he reached out and swung the gate open and shut, open and shut. The gate was badly in need of oil and squeaked loudly as Samu swung it backward and forward.
Soon Samu heard the same loud squeak come from the old woman’s front porch. It was the bird—the clever talking bird!
“Squeeeeeeeeek, squeeeeeeeeek! Naughty boy! Who’s there?” called the bird in the yellow cage. Then it barked shrilly like the old lady’s Pekinese dog.
Samu clutched the gate and giggled. “Hello, hello!” called Samu.
“Hello, hello!” replied the bird.
Samu felt very clever. He ran to his home in the village and told his mother that he was teaching a bird to speak. His mother laughed, because she knew nothing of talking birds.
“I will show you, Mother,” Samu said excitedly. “As soon as I get a bird of my own, I will teach it to talk!”
Mother was busy pounding corn into mealie, and she just laughed at Samu’s promise and told him to run away and play.
Samu asked some of his friends to help him catch a bird. “I will teach it to talk,” he told them. But his friends only laughed, for they had never heard of a talking bird.
Next Samu spoke to Old Mwanza, who sat all day by his hut warming his old bones in the sun.
“Birds do not talk. Men talk—and they talk too much,” said the old man, shaking his grizzled head at Samu. “Why teach birds to add to the chatter?”
Samu wandered off into the bush by himself, wondering how he could catch a bird and train it to talk as the old woman’s bird did. He had almost given up hope when he saw a black crow sitting in the branches of a msasa tree hoarsely croaking about nothing in particular.
Why don’t I try to make friends with this bird by feeding it? he thought. I will bring it some of mother’s cooked mealie every day at the same time until it knows me.
Samu quickly ran home and begged for some hard-cooked porridge. His mother gave him a handful, and back he ran to the msasa tree and spread lumps of mealie on the ground. Then he hid in the bushes. After a lot of surprised scraaaking, the crow hopped down and began to peck at the mealie.
Every day for three weeks Samu took a handful of porridge and fed the crow. It no longer flew up into the tree with a scraaaaak of fright when Samu arrived. Now it hopped up close to him and jumped up and down in the dust, waiting for Samu to spread the porridge.
At first when Samu tried touching its feathered back, it hopped out of reach and looked at him with bright beady eyes as it scolded, “Quraaaaaaack?”
But in another week Samu could stroke the crow’s back gently while it pecked up the food.
Now! he decided triumphantly. Now I can teach it to talk.
“Say hello,” Samu told the crow. “Hello, hello, hello.”
“Scraaaaaaaak!” replied the crow.
“You will have to do better than that,” Samu said patiently. “Now try again. Say hello. Hello, hello, hello.”
“Scraaaaaaaaak?” repeated the crow, putting its head to one side and blinking at Samu with curious eyes.
“Look,” scolded Samu. “If the other bird can say it, so can you. You’re not trying.”
“Crraasquk,” squawked the crow as it flew up to the lowest branch of the msasa tree.
Samu walked home through the bush, dragging his bare feet and feeling miserable. Why wouldn’t his bird even try to talk?
He went back to see Old Mwanza and told him that the crow refused to learn to talk.
“This bird that talks with many voices and barks like a dog and squeaks like a gate,” said the old man, “must have two tongues. Perhaps your bird only has one tongue.”
I guess my crow does have only one tongue Samu thought sadly. But I will try once more! So back he went to the msasa tree with a handful of mealie. He fed his crow and then squatted down in the dust beside it. “Hello!” he said loudly. The crow danced sideways for a moment and then hopped on to Samu’s knee.
“Squaaaaako!” said the crow, and again it flew up into the tree.
Samu felt quite sorry for himself. All of his work for nothing!
Behind him the old man chuckled. He had followed Samu to see how he was getting along with teaching his bird to talk. “Samu,” he said, “it’s good to try hard to do something. But it is foolish to try to do the impossible. Would you try to teach a hen to swim like a duck or a dog to crow like a rooster?”
“No,” said Samu sheepishly. “But the old woman’s bird talks. Why shouldn’t mine?”
“I have found out about the old woman’s bird,” explained Old Mwanza. “It is a parrot—a talking bird. Your crow will make a fine pet. Why don’t you teach it to come when you call and to hop after you when you go for walks. Then you will be teaching it something it is able to learn.”
“One day I will get a talking bird,” said Samu. Then he started to laugh. “Teaching a crow to talk is like teaching a dog to crow!” he said.
The crow looked at him with its bright beady eyes and said, “Squarrrrrrrrk!”

With that kind of tradition, it was no wonder that Dene had soccer (or football, as the British usually call it) in his blood. The first gift he received from his father was a soccer ball. When he began walking at 11 months, that ball was an old and treasured possession and he began kicking it immediately. By the time he was a year and a half old, he was handling it better than most Americans his age ever would. But at that point he suffered his first setback. One day while he was out kicking his ball, he slipped and broke his leg. He was in a hospital six weeks with his leg in a sling, and he wore a cast for another six weeks. He had to learn to walk all over again, but he began kicking the ball long before his cast came off.

I sank into my chair in shame as the teacher introduced the lesson on chastity. “Now, I know you girls don’t have trouble with the law of chastity … ,” she started off. Little did she—or anyone else—know that it was something I had struggled with as a young woman.

Lessons in church made me feel that sexual feelings were only appropriate within marriage and that sexual feelings outside of marriage were bad. I felt ashamed, weak, and alone, which led me to resent the whole topic completely.

Growing up in the Church, I used to think that talking about sex—even in appropriate ways—or acknowledging sexual thoughts and feelings was taboo or wrong unless you were married. My thoughts were skewed to think that any curiosity or question about sexuality or even chastity should be repressed because it didn’t follow God’s plan. And because I thought my questions were too shameful to discuss with anyone, I looked for answers from sources that did not reflect sexuality the way Heavenly Father intends.

I struggled with my feelings and behaviors for years. I knew they were wrong, but I didn’t know who I could turn to for help. I carried the weight of sins and shame with me every day, but I still tried to do everything else right. I seemed to be stuck in an “in-between zone”—with half of me in the world and the other half in the gospel.

I wanted more than anything to put my whole self in the gospel. So I studied my scriptures, I prayed, I participated in Church activities, and I fulfilled my callings. The gospel seemed to be the only thing that brought me relief.

As I gradually learned more and came closer to the Savior, my desire to fully live the law of chastity grew stronger. After a lot of pondering and praying, I finally decided to talk with my bishop about my struggles.

As I left my bishop’s office, that weight I had carried on my shoulders for so many years seemed to disappear. I cried with relief. I already felt the Savior’s healing power working in my life. Meetings with my bishop helped me, through the repentance process, to understand that my feelings were normal and that I wasn’t alone in struggling with chastity. I learned there are others—like me—who have suffered in silence because of shame, fear, and misunderstanding.

I recall a day when one of our children was leaving for school with his friend. I waved good-bye and called out, “Remember who you are.” As they walked away, I overheard the friend ask, “Why does your mother always say that to you? What does she mean?” I heard our son’s quick reply, “She means, ‘Be good.’” He was exactly right. We remember who we are by doing good, and we do good when we remember who we are.

I was stumped by the question. A night at the movies with a friend had somehow turned into a one-hour discussion about religion. We’d discussed our beliefs and read Bible verses, and now my friend had posed this question:
“Why are you going to serve a mission?”
I’d been preparing for my mission all my life, and now, somehow, I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Why would I give up two years of my life—college, scholarships, friends, family—for a mission? It didn’t seem logical from a worldly point of view.
I don’t remember my answer from that night, but whatever it was, it didn’t satisfy me. I pondered the question over and over again for the next several months.
One day I was chatting online with a friend. She’d met with the missionaries but wasn’t really feeling the Spirit, and another friend of ours kept encouraging her to listen to the missionaries. She asked me why our friend was so eager, and I told her, “Well, if you had something in your life that meant everything to you, you would be a pretty bad friend if you didn’t try to share it with others!”
Suddenly, my answer started to come to me. As I lay in bed that night, I remembered a time when I’d felt the Holy Ghost very strongly. I’d been struggling with a decision; I’d finally prayed about it and felt an overwhelming sense of joy and peace, knowing that everything would work out. I realized how much I wanted everybody to feel that same feeling. I thought about how if you discovered a cure for cancer, you wouldn’t just hide it in a laboratory—you’d share it with the world! I understood that the gospel was a “cure” for all of life’s problems, so why wouldn’t I want to share it with others? I realized that nothing the world offers can ever measure up to the wonderful opportunity of serving the Lord and sharing the gospel with others.

When I was a young mother, my husband and I found ourselves taking our five children under the age of eight to live in South America. Although none of us spoke the language, my six-year-old had the greatest difficulty learning a new language. We decided to put her in preschool with four-year-olds, even though she should be starting first grade. Our hope was that interaction with younger children would be less intimidating to her and might facilitate her ability to communicate in Portuguese.
But the reality for my daughter was that she was as foreign to the children as they were to her. Each day was a struggle, and I anguished for her every morning as I walked her to school and then waited for her to return, dejected, at the end of the day.
One day, some children were particularly unkind to her. A few even threw rocks and bullied her, laughing rudely at recess. She was scared and hurt and decided she couldn’t go back into class. Sitting alone while the playground emptied, she remembered what we had taught her about loneliness. She remembered that Heavenly Father is always close to His children and she could speak to Him at any time, not just before bedtime. He would understand the language of her heart. In a corner of the playground, she bowed her head and said a prayer. She didn’t know what to pray for, so she asked that her father and mother could be with her to protect her. While she was returning to the classroom, a Primary song came into her mind.
I often go walking in meadows of clover,
And I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue.
I gather the blossoms the whole meadow over;
Dear mother, all flowers remind me of you.
[“I Often Go Walking,” Children’s Songbook, 202]
As she opened her eyes, she noticed one little flower growing between the cracks of the cement. She picked it up and put it into her pocket. Her troubles with the other children did not disappear, but she walked back into the school feeling that her parents were with her.

“My Young Women leaders had challenged me to finish reading the Book of Mormon by November,” says Sierra Hoffman, a Mia Maid from Albany, Oregon. “I was in the middle of it when President Hinckley gave the challenge to all members to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year.”
She could have simply finished from where she was. And she did. Then, after completing her leaders’ challenge, Sierra turned back to 1 Nephi in late November and started reading again—this time to meet President Hinckley’s reading challenge. She read each night, sometimes for several hours.
“The spirit that filled my room and my heart as I read was amazing!” she says. “Passages that I had never noticed before stood out and touched me deeply. Verses that had confused me before made sense. Tears would fill my eyes as I read about the Savior visiting the Americas.”
Sierra also noticed a change in her 10-year-old brother as he, too, began reading from the Book of Mormon daily. He became more loving, kind, and respectful. Just as President Hinckley promised when he made the challenge, there was a greater feeling of the Spirit of the Lord in the Hoffman family’s home.

About this time, a seminary teacher in our branch challenged me to write in my journal every day for 20 days. She said if I did, it would become a habit. I decided to try it.

Writing was hard at first, but it got easier. I found that by writing down my feelings and thoughts, I naturally included feelings and thoughts of a spiritual nature. I made my record fun by trying to include information I thought my children might be interested in someday—for example, how much things cost. I figured it would be interesting for them to see what daily life was like when I was young.

I received my 20-day challenge five years ago. I’m still writing in my journal every night. I get it out before I go to bed. I read my scriptures; then I write in my journal. Now it’s automatic, and I plan to keep writing in it throughout my life.

A few years ago I received the assignment to reorganize the Carey Idaho Stake. The plane landed at Twin Falls, and President Roy Hubert, who had served so well, met me there and drove me to his home. While we were driving, I asked him, “Is there anything I can do for you and your Saints?”
He said: “Oh, we have had a terrible drought for the last few years. This year it is particularly severe, and many farmers have left town to find employment elsewhere.”
I was so disturbed for our faithful members who love the Lord and the Church yet were losing their farms.
A young bishop, R. Spence Ellsworth, was called to serve as the new stake president. During the Sunday general session, results of the drought weighed heavily on my mind. As I was speaking, a strong prompting came. I asked them to do the following:
Faithfully pay an honest tithe, both young and old.
Humbly hold regular individual and family prayers.
Devotedly have daily personal and family scripture study.
Thankfully keep the Sabbath day holy.
Gratefully go to the temple often, there offering thanksgiving.
Willingly sustain and follow the new leaders.
Hold a stakewide fast, including everyone in the affected communities who would like to participate.
For the next couple of days following the stake conference, many members planted their crops with complete faith, even though there was no forecast of rain.
On Wednesday, under the direction of President Ellsworth, the whole stake fasted. That same week many members, the leaders, and their spouses went to the Boise Idaho Temple and offered their thanksgiving. While these faithful Saints were in the temple, rain began to fall on the entire community, though the weather forecast indicated no moisture for the next few weeks. The following Saturday, good rain fell again and continued for a few days. This happened late in the month of April. Significant snow fell in the mountains, providing enough moisture. In the Dietrich and Richfield communities, their reservoir had been under 30 percent, but after the people fasted, the reservoir was nearly full. The Carey water supply increased from about 44 percent to more than 100 percent of normal. Through the rest of the growing season, as members of the Carey Stake increased their faith by fasting a few more times, paying honest tithes, and attending the temple more frequently, the Lord heard and answered their prayers. Frost came late that year, so the farmers were able to harvest grain, sugar beets, alfalfa, potatoes, and other crops. From that day, and each year since, they have offered their thanksgiving prayers, and “because of … his tender mercies,”7 the Lord continues to bless them.

One young woman diagnosed with a serious illness learned a great deal about diet and nutrition as she followed her doctor’s instructions during a year of difficult medical treatment. She carefully studied what she ate and joked with friends that she had never thought she would become so interested in the science of food. But as she struggled with her illness, she discovered that the habits of scripture study, regular temple attendance, and daily prayer sustained her as much as anything that nourished her body. She found the hymns of the Church particularly comforting.

Although scripture study and prayer had been a part of her life before her illness, she appreciated this daily spiritual nourishment in a new way. “I need my morning prayer as much as I need my green, leafy vegetables,” she said. By seeking spiritual nourishment every day, she was able to feel the Savior’s sustaining presence in her life.

During the summer of 1996, our family hosted two musicians from a Russian folk-dance group. I had recently given my husband a subscription to the Liahona (Russian), and one morning, one of our guests started to look through the June 1996 issue. He got out his reading glasses and closely studied a particular page. Then he shared that page with our other Russian guest. I learned later that the item in the magazine that had caused such great interest was “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” issued by the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles.
At the end of the week, as they prepared to leave, our guests asked for only one souvenir—the magazine with the family proclamation in it. We gladly gave it to them—hopefully along with good experiences with our own family.
Victoria Morris,Bountiful 41st Ward, Bountiful Utah Heights Stake

Then another memory comes. It’s 1974, and my brothers and I are visiting with our great-grandfather Curtis Ellsworth. It is the last time I will see him in this life. He will die a short time later, at age 90, while I serve a mission in Guatemala.
In this moment from the past, I wonder: “What is Grandpa Ellsworth thinking as he looks upon us, his posterity? Does he remember when his own children were small? Does he worry about our future? Do we remind him that life passes swiftly?”
As we said goodbye in that long-ago moment, I remember that Grandpa Ellsworth wept. For decades I wondered why. Now I think I know.

When Edward returned from his mission, the country was in a depression and work was hard to find. Almost without money he fasted and prayed about the matter and felt impressed to pay his last two dollars as tithing. “Bishop,” he said in late November, “I know that I don’t owe this money yet, but I hope to owe it before the end of the year.”
The next day Edward continued to make his usual visits to offices and businesses in Salt Lake City, looking for work. He was leaving the last office when the foreman called him back and told him there was a job in Price, Utah, at the community newspaper (about 200 kilometers from Salt Lake City).
Edward arrived in Price the next day, the company having furnished his transportation money. By Christmas, with the overtime he had accumulated, Edward had earned $21.50. Fully repaid and with some to spare for having paid tithing, he said, “I could have the Christmas I desired.”

For example, I have a sweet Aunt Beryl Hollindrake. She told me that when she was just three or four years old that my great-grandmother, her Grandmother Featherstone, would hold her on her lap and tell her about the Savior, all the beautiful stories. Then she would recall how my great-grandmother would tell her about the Savior’s trial and how they beat him and cursed him and spit upon him—how they dragged him and forced him against the cross and drove huge spikes into his hands cruelly. She said, “As my grandmother would tell me these stories, tears would stream down her cheeks.” And she said, “It was on the lap of my grandmother that I learned to love the Savior with all my heart and soul.”

As I sat in the motel room anticipating the next day’s state cross-country race, I kept wondering if I was talented at all as an athlete. I was struggling with all the difficult emotions a 16-year-old could have. I felt I was running worse than when I was a freshman. I felt ugly. The fact I’d never had a date or a boyfriend like all of my other friends compounded my feelings of insecurity. And I wanted so badly to feel accepted.
I had gone to bed early, and my teammates thought I was asleep. I heard them giggling, and then they nudged my shoulder and said, “Here, Jenny. Have some water.” I could distinctly smell that it was not water.
I was angry at my supposed “friends” for trying to play a trick on me. Did they think I was stupid? I was scared they might force the liquor down my throat. I wanted to run away to the security of my mother’s arms, yet that seemed so childish for a teenager who yearned for independence.
A thousand questions raced through my mind. By drinking the liquor, would I be part of the “in” crowd? Would the alcohol make me beautiful? Would it give me a boyfriend? Would I be able to run faster, or even win the race?
I knew all the answers to these questions, so I boldly said, “No, that’s not water and I’m not going to drink it.” I believe both of those girls beat me in the race the next day. However, I knew I had won a race in the Lord’s eyes because I had kept the Word of Wisdom.
The bus trip home seemed particularly long. I was anxious to return home to my family and tell my mother what happened. The next night at the dinner table Mom presented me with a gift. I didn’t recall ever receiving a present unless it was Christmas or my birthday. My five brothers and sisters watched me open it. They were all thankful for and proud of my decision.
Around that dinner table is where I felt talented, beautiful, and accepted—an acceptance that I may never find at school or on a cross-country team.