Gospel Story Finder

In her youth she dreamed of marriage and motherhood but was single for many years. “Sometimes I wondered if my dreams would ever be fulfilled,” Sister Cook says. “But I tried to have faith and focus on the blessings I did have.”
During this time she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech pathology and audiology and an EdS (Education Specialist) degree from Brigham Young University. She worked as a special education teacher and later as a school administrator.
On July 16, 1988, in the Salt Lake Temple, she married Richard E. Cook, who later served as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. At that time, Sister Cook says she “inherited four wonderful children and became a grandmother of eight,” as Elder Cook’s first wife had passed away in 1984. They now have 17 grandchildren.

Oriol Atus, first counselor in the North District presidency, has given up two job offers and a promotion because of his refusal to participate. “To be successful in many places, you must practice voodoo. Several times, my employers or prospective employers have asked me to choose between the Church and voodoo. Of course, I always left the job or gave up the promotion. I work for less money now, but it’s worth it.”

Anna sat quietly in her Primary class. She looked at the picture of Jesus that Sister Albo held.
“Does anyone know what a testimony is?” Sister Albo asked.
Anna raised her hand. “Is it saying that we know the Church is true?”
“That’s part of it.” Sister Albo smiled. “When we share our testimony, we share what we know or believe is true about Jesus Christ and the Church. What do you know is true, Anna?”
Anna thought about it. “I know that Jesus loves me!”
“Yes, He does. You have a testimony that Jesus loves you.”
After church, Mommy asked, “What did you learn in Primary today, Anna?”
“I learned what a testimony is. When can I share my testimony?”
“Any time you want!” Daddy said. “We can have our own testimony meeting in home evening.”
Anna liked that idea. “We can even dress in our Sunday clothes!”
When it was time for home evening, Anna put on her favorite dress.
“Welcome to our family testimony meeting,” Daddy said.
Anna’s brother, Ethan, went first. “I know the gospel is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that Russell M. Nelson is our prophet today. I know that Jesus Christ lives.”
Then it was Anna’s turn. She stood up. “I love Jesus very much. I know He loves me. He cares about me and makes me happy. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.” Her heart felt warm.
Mommy gave her a hug. “Thank you, Anna. I could feel how much you love Jesus.”
Anna smiled. “Sharing my testimony makes me happy.”

In addition to spending evenings and Saturday mornings in rehearsals, the youth also served at the temple open house. Imagine spending five weeks of your summer vacation putting on and taking off slippers, hauling water and cookies, and smiling for 150,000 open-house visitors. That’s exactly what these faithful youth did between July 23 and August 20, 2005. “People would comment on how the young people were always smiling. That’s what they noticed,” recalls Alicia Bremmer of the Garden Grove First Ward.

“I felt really special because they noticed us. It is just cool because people really appreciated it,” Krista agrees. “The visitors were really interested and curious—nonmembers and members alike.”

I am reminded of an experience I had at the end of World War II. I received a telephone call from a man in New York, a multimillionaire who had a son in a military camp just outside of Salt Lake City. This young man had expected to be shipped overseas. Then the war ended and he remained in this camp, crowded like a sardine in a can. The boy was discouraged, and his father was worried. “Would you see if you can cheer him up a bit?” the father asked. I said I would be happy to.
I called the young man and invited him into the office for a little visit. When he arrived, I said, “Would you like to go have dinner with the family? My wife doesn’t know you’re coming, but you’ll be welcome.” He said, “I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do tonight.” We went out and had our dinner. We had our prayer. We gathered around the piano afterwards and enjoyed ourselves with some singing. Then after we visited for a while, I drove him down to his bus.
In a few days I got a letter from his father, and you’d have thought I’d saved that boy’s life. The father quoted the letter from his son, “Father, I didn’t know that there were any people in this world that lived like that.”
Yes, we take it for granted. Here was a man worth millions of dollars—could buy his son anything—and yet this simple thing of prayer and devotion in the home passed him by.

After I graduated from high school, I went to BYU. In my freshman English class I was assigned to write an essay about a time when I overcame a conflict. I chose to write about my relationship with Bruce. It was a very difficult paper to write, but after I did, I felt better.

A few months later I was asked to give a talk in my ward on repentance. I decided to share the story I had written. My mother and Bruce weren’t going to be able to make it. I was actually quite relieved to find out they weren’t going to be there. Then just before I was supposed to give my talk, my mother and Bruce slipped into the back of the chapel. My heart started to beat wildly. I felt like I was going to cry. I had to pull it together. What was I going to do?

After a few minutes into my talk, I began to read my story, and as I did, tears came streaming down my face. I paused, took a deep breath, and continued to cry throughout the rest of my talk. When I finished, I looked over at my mom and Bruce. They were both teary-eyed and sniffling. After church Bruce came up to me and told me he was so sorry. He said he hadn’t realized what I had been going through. He told me that he was sorry, whereas I was the one who had done all of the terrible things. I quickly told him that I was sorry and that I hoped he could forgive me. The beautiful part was that he had already forgiven me. I didn’t even have to ask.

“I want to speak about the dead.”
Thousands of Latter-day Saints hushed as Lucy Mack Smith’s voice echoed through the large assembly hall on the first floor of the nearly completed Nauvoo temple.
It was the morning of October 8, 1845, the third and final day of the fall conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Knowing she would not have many more opportunities to speak to the Saints—especially now that they planned to leave Nauvoo for a new home far to the west—Lucy spoke with a power beyond her feeble seventy-year-old body.
“It was eighteen years ago last twenty-second of September that Joseph took the plates out of the earth,” she testified, “and it was eighteen years last Monday since Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Lord—”1
She paused, remembering Joseph, her martyred son. The Saints in the room already knew how an angel of the Lord had led him to a set of gold plates buried in a hill called Cumorah. They knew that Joseph had translated the plates by the gift and power of God and published the record as the Book of Mormon. Yet how many Saints in the assembly hall had truly known him?
Lucy could still remember when Joseph, then only twenty-one years old, had first told her that God had entrusted him with the plates. She had been anxious all morning, afraid he would return from the hill empty-handed, as he had the four previous years. But when he arrived, he had quickly calmed her nerves. “Do not be uneasy,” he had said. “All is right.” He had then handed her the interpreters the Lord had provided for the translation of the plates, wrapped in a handkerchief, as proof that he had succeeded in getting the record.
There had been only a handful of believers then, most of them members of the Smith family. Now more than eleven thousand Saints from North America and Europe lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Church had gathered for the last six years. Some of them were new to the Church and had not had a chance to meet Joseph or his brother Hyrum before a mob shot and killed the two men in June 1844.2 That was why Lucy wanted to speak about the dead. She wanted to testify of Joseph’s prophetic call and her family’s role in the Restoration of the gospel before the Saints moved away.
Lucy knew the Saints would help her make this journey if she chose to go. Revelations had commanded the Saints to gather together in one place, and the Twelve were determined to carry out the Lord’s will. But Lucy was old and believed she would not live much longer. When she died, she wanted to be buried in Nauvoo near Joseph, Hyrum, and other family members who had passed on, including her husband, Joseph Smith Sr.
Furthermore, most of her living family members were staying in Nauvoo. Her only surviving son, William, had been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, but he had rejected their leadership and refused to go west. Her three daughters—Sophronia, Katharine, and Lucy—were also staying behind. So too was her daughter-in-law Emma, the prophet’s widow.
As Lucy spoke to the congregation, she urged her listeners not to fret about the journey ahead. “Do not be discouraged and say that you can’t get wagons and things,” she said. Despite poverty and persecution, her own family had fulfilled the Lord’s commandment to publish the Book of Mormon. She encouraged them to listen to their leaders and treat each other well.
“As Brigham says, you must be all honest or you will not get there,” she said. “If you feel cross, you will have trouble.”
Lucy spoke more about her family, the terrible persecution they had suffered in Missouri and Illinois, and the trials that lay ahead for the Saints. “I pray that the Lord may bless the heads of the Church, Brother Brigham and all,” she said. “When I go to another world, I want to meet you all.”6

As you pray to Heavenly Father in faith, “he will console you in your afflictions, … [and ye may] feast upon his love.”9 President Henry B. Eyring shared that his father’s prayers during a losing battle with cancer taught him the deeply personal relationship between God and His children:
“When the pain became intense, we found him in the morning on his knees by the bed. He had been too weak to get back into bed. He told us he had been praying to ask his Heavenly Father why he had to suffer so much when he had always tried to be good. He said a kindly answer came: ‘God needs brave sons.’
“And so he soldiered on to the end, trusting that God loved him, listened to him, and would lift him up. He was blessed to have known early and to never forget that a loving God is as close as a prayer.”10

When I was a boy, my family had a small farm with cows and hayfields. Growing up on a farm was hard work. Also, I had bad allergies, and the dust from the hay sometimes made me sick.
One hot summer day, my brother and I were working in the field. The wind was blowing hard, and there was a lot of dust in the air. My eyes were watering. It was hard to breathe. My nose even started to bleed because I’d rubbed it so much.
When my mother came out to the field and saw me, she told me to come inside the house. She had me lie on the couch with a wet cloth on my face. A few minutes later, she came back with two farmers in overalls.
The farmers were members of our ward. They placed their hands on my head and started to give me a blessing. My dad wasn’t a member of the Church then, so he didn’t hold the priesthood. But I’ll never forget the feeling I had as those men blessed me. It was warm, peaceful, and calming. And I didn’t feel so sick anymore.
Later in life, I realized that feeling was the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is sometimes called the Comforter. I like that name because it was the Holy Ghost that brought me comfort. It made me feel better on the outside and on the inside.

I was ordained a deacon in a branch so small that I was the only deacon and my brother Ted the only teacher. We were the only family in the branch. The entire branch met in our home. The priesthood leader for my brother and me was a new convert who had just received the priesthood himself. I believed then my only priesthood duty was to pass the sacrament in my own dining room.

When my family moved to Utah, I found myself in a large ward with many deacons. In my first sacrament meeting there, I observed the deacons—an army, it seemed to me—moving with precision as they passed the sacrament like a trained team.

I was so frightened that the next Sunday I went early to the ward building to be by myself when no one could see me. I remember that it was the Yalecrest Ward in Salt Lake City, and it had a statue on the grounds. I went behind the statue and prayed fervently for help to know how not to fail as I took my place in passing the sacrament. That prayer was answered.

But I know now that there is a better way to pray and to think as we try to grow in our priesthood service. It has come by my understanding why individuals are given the priesthood. The purpose for our receiving the priesthood is to allow us to bless people for the Lord, doing so in His name.

It was years after I was a deacon when I learned what that means practically. For instance, as a high priest, I was assigned to visit a care center sacrament meeting. I was asked to pass the sacrament. Instead of thinking about the process or precision in the way I passed the sacrament, I instead looked in the faces of each elderly person. I saw many of them weeping. One lady grabbed my sleeve, looked up, and said aloud, “Oh, thank you, thank you.”

The Lord had blessed my service given in His name. That day I had prayed for such a miracle to come instead of praying for how well I might do my part. I prayed that the people would feel the Lord’s love through my loving service. I have learned this is the key to serving and blessing others in His name.

For some reason as Peter Nordhoff walked through the room, the words he heard from the television made him stop. General conference was being broadcast, and his wife, who had been recently reactivated through the fellowship of a friend, was watching.
Peter and Adrina had been raised in the Church and married in the temple, but for nearly ten years they had not been involved much with the Church. At first, his work kept him busy on Sundays. When that changed, they used Sundays to relax together.
But that conference Sunday changed their lives. “The words of a prophet of God affected me,” Peter says. “The Spirit spoke to me through God’s mouthpiece. It was like a second birth for me. Listening to the prophet helped me realize that I must start doing the things I was supposed to be doing if I wanted my wife and daughter near me in eternity.” Later that day, Peter and Adrina went to their bishop.
“We went from less-active to overactive very quickly,” recalls Adrina, smiling.

Dad says it’s OK to use the barn for our riding club meetings. How about another one of those apples, McGraw? Well, guys, what do you say?” asked Jason Farwell, flipping the hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head.
“Boy, Jason, that’s great!” said Eddie Fowler. “Say, McGraw, where’d you get these good apples?”
“Mom gave me a whole sackful. Do you suppose we could have trail rides and rodeos and cookouts and stuff, Jase?”
“Sure. You in?” Jason asked Dexter McGraw, who liked anything that involved food or horses. “How about you, Eddie, you in?
“You bet,” mumbled Eddie with a mouthful of apple.
“Hey, Jase,” he said, swallowing, “let’s ask Barney Lightner to join too. He rides.”
Eddie always wanted to include Barney in their plans. Jason said it was because Barney was the only one in school who had redder hair and more freckles than Eddie.
“Now. Who wants him? He’s weird.”
“Not really, Jase. He’s pretty neat when you get to know him. OK? Here he comes now. Hey, Lightner!”
“Hi, Eddie, guys. Hey, can I have your apple cores when you’ve finished eating your apples?”
“See what I mean? A real winner,” grumbled Jason sarcastically under his breath. “Nuts, there’s the bell. Boy, they never make recesses long enough. Come on, we’ll finish talking after school. Oh, Lightner, here’s your apple core.”
After school Jason and Dexter met to finish making plans.
“Oh, no,” muttered Jason. “Here comes Eddie and Lightner. Hey, Lightner, eaten any apple cores lately?”
“Aw, knock it off, Jase,” said Eddie. “You know he takes them home to Thunder.”
“Lightner, what do you think of the idea of us starting a riding club?” asked Dexter. “We want to have trail rides and rodeos and stuff like that.”
“Yeah,” grumbled Jason. “You might as well join, too, Lightner.”
“Thanks, guys, but I wouldn’t have time for it. Oh, here comes the bus. I have to get home and ride old Thunder. See ya.”
“Well, how do you like that?” said Jason. “For a poor kid, he’s pretty snooty if you ask me.”
Saturday turned out to be one of those beautiful spring days when the sun feels extra warm and the breezes feel extra cool. The riding club had planned a trail ride and camp-out in a canyon called Webster’s Gulch. Since it was on their way, the boys decided to stop at the Lightners’ house to give Barney a chance to change his mind. Mrs. Lightner said they’d find him in the barnyard riding old Thunder.
As the boys rounded the corner of the house, they saw Barney astride—a mule! He took turns pleading and hollering at the animal, but it wouldn’t budge an inch. When Barney saw the boys, his face became even redder than his hair, and he stammered, “He’s not usually this stubborn. Honest.”
Not being able to afford the horse Barney had always dreamed of owning, his mother allowed him to ride their old work mule, which Barney had named Thunder.
After what seemed to Barney like an eternity of laughter and cowboy jokes, the boys finally left. One thing was sure—he was going to have a miserable day at school on Monday. They’d see to that!
Later the boys camped half-way up the canyon, and set up a tether line to tie their horses to. A wide ledge about four feet up the canyon wall made a perfect place to pitch their tent.
Late that night it started to thunder violently, and the lightning flashed almost without interruption. Eventually the thunder subsided to a distant rumble, but the rain remained a steady torrent. After a few ghost stories the boys dropped off to sleep.
Just before dawn, the boys were suddenly awakened by Jason’s shout of alarm. The horses had broken loose from their tether line, and the canyon was now a raging river, with water inching up toward their tent.
The boys made a desperate scramble up the sheer wall of the canyon only to fall down again to their ledge, which was rapidly disappearing under the water. And Jason, in his try for safety, twisted his ankle.
The boys saw their tent being swept away, and they knew that they would be next.
“Listen!” yelled Jason above the sound of the rushing water. “I hear something!”
Above the rumble of the distant thunder, the roar of the water, and the steady drumming of the rain, they heard someone hollering!
There, on the rim of the canyon above them, was Barney, and he was lowering a rope to them. His friends quickly tied the rope under Jason’s arms while Barney tied the other end to Thunder. Then Barney and Thunder pulled Jason and then the other two boys to safety.
“Boy! I never thought I’d be so glad to see your old mule!” exclaimed Eddie. “How’d you know we were in trouble, Barney?”
“I woke up when your horses went galloping through Mom’s garden. I figured you might have been flooded out after that heavy rain. So I rounded up old Thunder, grabbed a rope, and got here as fast as I could.”
Everyone at school on Monday was buzzing about how Barney Lightner and old Thunder had saved the boys from a flash flood.
“Well, Barney,” said Miss Wilkins, their teacher, “I hear that you’re some kind of a hero. And that Thunder of yours must really be some kind of horse!”
Barney sank down in his seat, fearing what would surely come next, when a shuffling sound in the doorway diverted everyone’s attention. There, on crutches, stood Jason.
“That’s right, Miss Wilkins,” Jason said with a wink toward Barney. “Old Thunder is some kind of horse!”

A small plane flew low over the trees and buzzed the camp. It was a signal, and several campers knew who the message was for. “Hey, your dad’s here. He just flew over.” One girl needed a warmer sleeping bag, so her father was going to drop it by, literally. Several girls ran out into an open area waiting for the plane to reappear. It came in low and slow. As the plane reached the playing field, a black plastic bag was pushed out a window and landed with a soft plop. No one seemed particularly amazed by this unusual way of delivering a forgotten sleeping bag. After all, this was Alaska, and many families own small planes. It’s almost a necessity if your work or home is away from a city.

My husband and I joined the Church in 1973. Before we were baptized, our two year old son and only child had died after open heart surgery. We longed to have another child, especially as we gained new understanding from gospel principles.
Our stake patriarch promised, one year later, that the Lord would give me more children if I called upon him in faith and kept myself worthy.
In 1976, I learned that I was pregnant, but four and a half months later, I had a miscarriage.
In the hospital I had read my patriarchal blessing many times. We’d had one child after receiving the blessing. But there it was, from the mouth of the patriarch: The Lord would give us children. I was already thirty-five years old, and after losing two children, I was discouraged.
In 1984, two years after Christian’s death, our beloved daughter was born. I was close to dying giving birth to her.
We rejoice in the knowledge that our two sons are waiting for us in the spirit world, and we rejoice in our daughter who already has said her first prayer. If any more children are intended for us, we will gladly receive them.

“Matt, let’s go to the Colorado River,” Dad suggested. I was seven years old, and my family was visiting both sets of grandparents in St. George, Utah. Eager to see the mighty Colorado, I yelled, “Great! Let me get my skipping stones.”
Little did I know that he meant we were going to the Grand Canyon traveling over cow trails. Yes, we would see the Colorado River, but we would be on a cliff about a mile (1.5 km) above it. There would be no skipping of stones.
Grandpa Holland loaned us his truck and gave us a homemade map and a set of directions to help us find our way on a little-used dusty path along the back roads of the Utah-Arizona border. As we turned off the paved road, lumbered through the desert, climbed a set of hills, crossed another desert, went up another set of hills, I wondered how Grandpa or anyone else ever found this place.
We reached the overlook of the Grand Canyon late in the afternoon. After looking at the spectacular view and launching a few stones as far as I could throw, we got back into Grandpa’s old truck and started the trek home.
It was dusk, and we had only gone a bumpy mile or two when we came to a fork in the road. We stopped. Dad was not certain which trail we had come in on. He knew he had to make the right decision. There wasn’t much light left, light he desperately needed to ensure he could make the correct turns the rest of the way home.
Wasting time on a wrong road now meant we would face the difficult task of making our way home in the dark.
As we did whenever we had a family problem or concern, we prayed. After we both said amen, Dad turned and asked me what I thought we should do. I answered and said, “All during the prayer, I just kept feeling, ‘Go to the left.’”
Dad responded, “I had the exact same impression.”
This was my first experience receiving and recognizing revelation.
We started down the dirt road to the left. We had traveled only about 10 minutes when our road came to a sudden dead-end. My father promptly whipped the truck around, roared back to that fork in the path, and started down the road to the right. Fortunately, there was still just enough light to help us navigate the web of dirt roads that would take us home.
We were almost back to St. George, now on roads my father knew well, and the thick darkness of the night was lit by pinholes of thousands of stars.
I was troubled. With my head resting on my dad’s leg and my legs stretched across the seat, I asked, “Dad, why did we both feel like Heavenly Father told us to go down the road to the left when it was the wrong road?”
My dad said, “Matty, I’ve been thinking and silently praying about that same thing all the way home, because I really did feel a very distinct impression to take the road to the left.”
I was relieved that my first experience with revelation had a “second witness.”
He continued, “The Lord has taught us an important lesson today. Because we were prompted to take the road to the left, we quickly discovered which one was the right one. When we turned around and got on the right road, I was able to travel along its many unfamiliar twists and turnoffs perfectly confident I was headed in the right direction.
“If we had started on the right road, we might have driven for 30 minutes or so, become uneasy with the unfamiliar surroundings, and been tempted to turn back. If we had done that, we would have discovered the dead-end so late that it would have been too dark to find our way back in totally unfamiliar territory.”
I understood and have never forgotten the lesson my Heavenly Father and earthly father taught me that afternoon. Sometimes in response to prayers, the Lord may guide us down what seems to be the wrong road—or at least a road we don’t understand—so, in due time, He can get us firmly and without question on the right road. Of course, He would never lead us down a path of sin, but He might lead us down a road of valuable experience. Sometimes in our journey through life we can get from point A to point C only by taking a short side road to point B. We had prayed that we could make it safely home that day, and we did.

Occasionally the group does have some free time during tours to use as it pleases. Oftentimes group members will sink into peaceful oblivion on the lawn of a chapel where they are to perform, but other times their free moments are spent in ways that attract at least as much attention as their performances.
Sandy Ord, a member of the group for the past two years, remembers a softball game where the boys challenged the girls on the lawn outside their motel. There’s nothing so unusual about that except for the fact the entire game was played without any equipment.
“We had the whole thing,” said Sandy, “umpire, cheerleaders, even a human scoreboard. And since there was no ball, you just pretended where to hit it. The girls were always hitting home runs, and, of course, we won.”

One who exemplified charity in his life was President George Albert Smith. Immediately following World War II, the Church had a drive to amass warm clothing to ship to suffering Saints in Europe. Elder Harold B. Lee and Elder Marion G. Romney took President George Albert Smith to Welfare Square in Salt Lake City to view the results. They were impressed by the generous response of the membership of the Church. They watched President Smith observing the workers as they packaged this great volume of donated clothing and shoes. They saw tears running down his face. After a few moments, President George Albert Smith removed his own new overcoat and said, “Please ship this also.”

The Brethren said to him, “No, President, no; don’t send that; it’s cold and you need your coat.”

But President Smith would not take it back; and so his coat, with all the others, was sent to Europe, where the nights were long and dark and food and clothing were scarce. Then the shipments arrived. Joy and thanksgiving were expressed aloud, as well as in secret prayer.

I share just one tender experience. While President Monson was serving as a bishop, he learned that a member of his ward, Mary Watson, was in the hospital. As he went to visit her, he learned that she was staying in a large room with several other patients. When he approached Sister Watson, he noticed that the patient in a neighboring bed quickly covered her head.
After President Monson had visited with Sister Watson and given her a priesthood blessing, he shook her hand, said good-bye, and prepared to leave. Then a simple but amazing thing happened. I quote now from President Monson’s own recollection of this experience:
“I could not leave her side. It was as though an unseen hand [was] resting on my shoulder, and I felt within my soul that I was hearing these words: ‘Go over to the next bed where the little lady covered her face when you came in.’ I did so. …
“I approached the bedside of the other patient, gently tapped her shoulder and carefully pulled back the sheet which had covered her face. Lo and behold! She, too, was a member of my ward. I had not known she was a patient in the hospital. Her name was Kathleen McKee. When her eyes met mine, she exclaimed through her tears, ‘Oh, Bishop, when you entered that door, I felt you had come to see me and bless me in response to my prayers. I was rejoicing inside to think that you would know I was here, but when you stopped at the other bed, my heart sank, and I knew that you had not come to see me.’
“I said to [Sister] McKee: ‘It does not matter that I didn’t know you were here. It is important, however, that our Heavenly Father knew and that you had prayed silently for a priesthood blessing. It was He who prompted me to intrude on your privacy.’”17

When Marie married Tony, a nonmember, she was sure that he would not long resist the beauty and grace of the church that contained the full gospel of Jesus Christ. She loved the gospel, she loved him—surely the two would naturally come together. But, as the years went by, and even after six children, Tony was no closer to becoming a member of the Church.
All this time, Marie suffered the dilemma that many active Latter-day Saint members married to less-active or nonmember spouses share. She had two loves that she couldn’t bring together.
The gospel grew to be more precious as Marie became a wife and then a mother. More than anything, she wanted to share the gospel message with her husband. At times, she wanted to shake the earth with her testimony so that he, her best friend and confidant, would suddenly understand. Her existence, as well as that of her children and husband, had been enriched by the Church’s teachings and standards. Couldn’t he see that?
Although she wanted Tony to understand her regard for the Church, she recognized that using the Church as a wedge would split, rather than solidify, her marriage. She had seen it happen before when husbands and wives tried to force the Church into their relationships, only to have anger and rebellion result.
Marie determined not to have to force a choice between the Church and her husband, making the Church her husband’s enemy. If anything, the gospel was an ally, teaching her how to love, and understand, and forgive.
She felt that, aside from one’s own personal relationship with God, a good marriage relationship was the most sacred concern of a husband and wife. She decided that converting Tony to the Church ought not be her primary goal, nor should the marriage be sacrificed to that end. “After ten years of disappointment,” she says, “I decided to stop putting pressure on Tony to join the Church. Before we were married, my parents were upset about our engagement. They tried hard to discourage us, but, from the moment we married, they ceased their opposition and gave us 100 percent of their love and support. I should have followed their good example years earlier.
“So one day I said to Tony, ‘You are more important to me than anything else, regardless of whether you join the Church.’ Since then, we have been happier, and I have felt more peaceful.
“Tony treats me well; he has good values, and he is honest. But I had been feeling sorry for myself because he wasn’t a Church member. I decided to stop complaining and start being grateful. The Church doesn’t make marriage work—love, acceptance, and trust do that. The Church is a guide, not a guarantee.”

I will never forget the day decades ago when I was sitting in early-morning seminary in Michigan. My teacher was talking about the mission to the Zoramites in the Book of Mormon. All of a sudden, he jumped up on the table and began to read in a loud voice the Rameumptom prayer. That woke us all up! It has been many years, but that is seared in my memory. A group of teenagers were profoundly impacted by a teacher who was role-playing.