Gospel Story Finder

I have also had to repent. Before I repented, my friends all knew what was going on, and I felt like I was letting everyone down. My family relationships were bad too. It helped to talk to my parents. They were upset, but they supported my decision to change. I lost a lot of friends, but the ones I have now love me even though I made some bad choices. It helps to pray to Heavenly Father. He knew what I was going through and helped me through the trial. He will help anyone who asks for help.
Allisyn G., 16, Utah, USA

While presiding at a stake conference, a bishop testified to me of the importance of family councils and the role each of us has in Heavenly Father’s plan. His 19-year-old son refused to serve a full-time mission because of peer pressure. The father, who was a bishop, had many discussions with his son but still the boy insisted on not going on a mission. Father and mother decided it was best to call a family council. In the family council, the boy’s younger sister convinced her parents that she could help the situation. Both parents wondered what the little girl was planning on doing that she believed would make a difference. He later found out that the little girl went to the Lord in prayer and got the inspiration to show more love and care to the brother. One day, she got an impression and asked her brother, “What kind of man would you want me to marry someday?”
The brother answered, “My lovely sister, I want you to be happy, and for you to be happy, I would love for you to marry a good member of the Church.”
She then asked, “Good member? What makes a good member?”
He replied and said, “A man that loves the Savior and will serve Him and obey His commandments, and more especially, a return missionary.”
The girl looked at her brother and said, “This is why you need to serve the Lord through a full-time mission.”
Months after, the young man went on mission and returned honorably. Ponder on the little girl’s contribution to the plan.

I conclude by reading from a letter I received from a convert to the Church who, after the required waiting period, took his family to the holy temple of God for a sealing ordinance. He wrote:
“We love this church and we love the Lord and our Heavenly Father. We were on the verge of a total family failure when some of our LDS friends here began to work with us.
“Even now as I sit here and think back to Saturday, I have to be amazed at the way the Church has changed our lives, from almost total family loss to an eternal family! …
“Nothing can compare to seeing my wife and child dressed in white, with a radiant glow around them, and feeling the very Spirit of God whisper in my ear, ‘John, they’re yours for all time and all eternity.’”

The day after I talked with Mrs. Leininger, I attended my first LDS meeting. I woke up on Saturday, November 26, 1977, and drove thirty minutes to the San Rafael stake center. I parked, got out of my car, and walked up to a side door of the church, where I saw Mrs. Leininger waiting for me.

As we walked into the building, I expected to see crucifixes, candles, statues, and all the other things I associated with a religious building. Mrs. Leininger brought me into a large basketball gym that she called the “cultural hall.” Rows of folding chairs were facing a stage, where several people sat behind a podium.

Mrs. Leininger led me to a seat near center court. This was familiar to me, since I had played many games on basketball courts attached to churches with my friends in the Catholic Youth Organization. As I looked around, I saw no crosses, no altars, no candles, no statues, and no pews with kneelers. I saw no stained-glass windows, but I did see two nice and clean glass basketball backboards with brand-new nets. I thought, “This is a great church!”

The church I grew up in mostly included elderly women, so when I saw that most of those in attendance were teenagers and included a number of attractive young women, I again thought, “This is a great church!”

As an Episcopal altar boy, I had worn robes and a crucifix and had carried a large wood and gold cross at the front of the procession into church services. So I was waiting for the organ to begin playing and the acolytes, priest, deacon, and choir to parade into the meeting dressed in robes.

Instead a man in a suit simply stood up and began conducting the meeting. We sang, someone prayed, and then someone introduced Brother Brenton Yorgason from Utah as the special youth conference speaker. He spoke for about an hour and told a number of wonderful stories, and there was a lot of laughing. This surprised me, since the church I was raised in included a lot of incense but not much laughter. Again I thought, “This is a great church!”

I was feeling really good about my experience in church until suddenly I realized that I had forgotten to bring money for the offering or collection. I assumed that after the sermon they would pass a collection plate to receive the monetary offering. As a kid, if I had forgotten to bring money, I felt awkward when the plate was passed to me and I had to just pass it on.

So I turned to Mrs. Leininger and whispered, “I’m sorry. I feel really bad, but I forgot to bring money for the offering.”

She said, “For the what?”

I said, “For the offering. You know, when they pass the plate around.”

She said, “Oh, we don’t do that.”

I thought, “Wow, you get to sit in a gym with people your own age and listen to funny stories, and you don’t have to pay anything. This is a great church!”

After Brother Yorgason finished speaking, nearly all the young men and women there stood, one by one, and “bore their testimony” of what they believed. I experienced the same feelings I had had while reading the Book of Mormon and while praying.

At the end of the meeting we all stood, and Mrs. Leininger asked me what I thought. I said it was incredible and asked how I could join her church. She smiled very widely and, while nodding, waved over a couple of young guys in suits with name tags. It seemed like they were expecting this signal.

To me these guys with their short hair and dark suits looked quite strange (this was the 1970s California of long hair and short shorts), but their enthusiastic smiles and vigorous handshakes were warm and welcoming. Elders Hawkes and Christensen asked if they could teach me about the gospel. I said that would be great. After a luncheon, where I was seated across from Brother and Sister Yorgason, we went to the Leiningers’ home.

I sat on the sofa surrounded by Brother and Sister Leininger, a few of their adult children, and Elders Hawkes and Christensen, all of whom seemed really excited to teach me about their faith. These Idaho farm boys looked, spoke, and acted unlike anyone I had ever met. Yet because of what I had experienced during my prayer, I wanted to be like these ­missionaries and do what they were doing.

They told me about Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Everything I was being told was new and strange, but somehow it all made sense to me. And I was having the same feelings I had had while reading the Book of Mormon and saying my prayer and attending the youth conference meeting.

I was wondering what these feelings could be when the elder who was speaking stopped—mid-sentence—closed his flip chart of pictures, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Dave, what you are feeling right now is the Holy Ghost telling you that what we are teaching you is true. That is what you felt when you read the Book of Mormon and today at church.”

I was astounded! This guy I had just met, who was only a little older than I was, somehow had read my mind and knew that I was feeling ­something—and that I had felt it before. There was no way he could have known that unless God had told him.

The elder then said, “Dave, the Lord wants you to be baptized into His Church. Will you be baptized two weeks from today?”

I said, “Yes, I will! And then can I go and do what you are doing?”

The elders looked extremely happy and very surprised. They said they were thrilled that I wanted to be baptized but that I would need to wait for a year before I could be a missionary.

I said, “I don’t want to wait a year; I want to go right now!”

One elder said, “Well, you need time to learn more about the gospel and prepare to enter the temple before your mission.”

I said, “Okay, what should I do to prepare to be a missionary?”

One of the elders said, “You should go to BYU and take religion classes.”

I said, “Okay, what is BYU?”

He said, “It is a Mormon university in Utah.”

I said, “Okay, where is Utah?”

He said, “In the Rocky Mountains.”

I said, “Where are the Rocky Mountains?”

I was a dumb teenage jock from California who had never paid any attention to geography. To me there was California, then blah, blah, blah, and then New York City (where Saturday Night Live came from).

I said I would go to BYU and prepare to serve a two-year mission for a church I had only been to once.

Another example: We once had a major decision to make. When our prayers left us uncertain, I went to see Elder Harold B. Lee. He counseled us to proceed. Sensing that I was still very unsettled, he said, “The problem with you is you want to see the end from the beginning.” Then he quoted this verse from the Book of Mormon, “Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6).
He added, “You must learn to walk a few steps ahead into the darkness, and then the light will turn on and go before you.” That was a life-changing experience from one verse in the Book of Mormon.

“We had one lesson at least every two months on preparing to go on a mission,” Elder Kolb said. “On the blackboard we’d list all the things you needed to do to get ready—preparing yourself physically, spiritually, and financially. I felt like my spiritual and physical preparations were okay, but not my financial. So at 15 I got a job planting trees, and I had that job for five years. I’ll be able to pay for my whole mission myself.”

This past holiday was pretty special for our family because it had been about 5 years since we were all together for Christmas. The one thing I wanted most was to take a family picture. Because of scheduling (people working or people returning to the mainland), we only had one morning to be able to do this. Imagine getting the grandchildren up early (one was 6 months and another was a 2 year old), everyone getting “nicely” dressed, and then everyone driving to Ho’omaluhia. Everything seemed to be under control…except, (Houston, we have a problem) it was raining! There was no blue on the ocean, mist/fog was all over the place, and the Ko’olau mountaintops were covered with dark gray clouds … We all started calling/texting each other from the different cars…“Okay. What are we doing? What are we going to do with this rain that does not look like it’s going to go away soon?” I get a phone call and one of our sons, Keola asked, “Do we have a backup plan or are we going on faith?” In the background, I could hear our 6 year old granddaughter (Riley) say, “Faith. Choose Faith.” Looking out the car window, I thought, “How do I pray to Heavenly Father and ask Him to stop the rain?” “How do I explain to Riley this is an almost impossible request?” However, we continued to the end of Ho’omaluhia having faith that Heavenly Father is in charge. This picture is even more precious now because it’s a clear manifestation of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ’s love for the Kaluhiokalani ‘ohana. The rain stopped, we took our pictures, and it started pouring again as we drove out of Ho’omaluhia. There is no doubt in our sons, their wives, and our grandchildren that we experienced a miracle that morning. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were aware of our circumstance that morning.

Lucy prepared herself early in her marriage to raise a prophet. On one occasion she became seriously ill, and the doctors said she would die. Lucy records that she “made a solemn covenant with God that if He would let me live I would endeavor to serve him according to the best of my abilities.” After a voice assured her that she would live, she told her mother, “the Lord will let me live, if I am faithful to the promise which I made to him, to be a comfort to my mother, my husband, and my children” (Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, by His Mother, Lucy Mack Smith, ed. Preston Nibley, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1979, p. 34).

I have in mind a special moment in Church history which has a great bearing on our testimonies and on the progress of the gospel. I hope that it has been duly recorded by those who keep the history. I refer to what happened on the 4th of April, 1974.
The story really begins on the 26th of December, 1973. President Harold B. Lee passed away suddenly on that day. His death was completely unexpected. It is necessary to remember that over a period of twenty-five years, members of the Church had awaited the time when Harold B. Lee would become the president. There had been every reason to think that this would eventually happen, due to his relative youthfulness and because he occupied a position in seniority following Joseph Fielding Smith and David O. McKay, both of whom were of advanced age. In addition, Harold B. Lee had gained more than average prominence. His leadership in the welfare and priesthood programs of the Church, his forceful nature, and his sound judgment had made him one of the apostles most listened to and one whose influence and advice were most respected. He had an evident spiritual stature which commended him to the members of the Church as one of the great men of our time. He possessed an unusual ability to relate as a personal friend to countless people. It was expected that when he became president he would preside for twenty years or more.
Suddenly he was gone!—called elsewhere after only one and one-half years. It was the first time since the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith when the president had died before it was time for him to die. In deep sorrow and concern the surging questions arose in the minds of the people, much as they did at the time when Joseph Smith was killed in Carthage, Illinois. “What will we do now? How can we carry on without the prophet? Our great leader has gone. Can the Church survive this emergency?”
Of course we knew that the Church would survive, but it could not possibly be the same. We had never expected Spencer W. Kimball to become the president, and we had not looked to him for the same leadership evident in the life of Harold B. Lee. We knew, of course, that he would manage somehow, until the next great leader arose, but it would not be easy for him, and things would not be the same. “O Lord,” we prayed, “please bless President Kimball. He needs all the help you can give him.” Such seemed to be the attitude in the hearts of the Latter-day Saints during those days of mourning.
We return to the 4th of April, 1974. There were gathered that morning in the Church Office Building, all of the General Authorities as well as the Regional Representatives and other leaders from around the world. We were to be instructed once again, as we had been periodically during the past seven years. On each preceding occasion Harold B. Lee had given us our direction and sounded the trump of leadership. Now he was no longer there, and we all felt his absence deeply. Again came the questions: “How can we proceed without our great leader?” “How can President Kimball fill the empty space?” And again the prayers went forth: “Please bless President Kimball.”
The moment came when President Kimball arose to address the assembled leadership. He noted that he also had never expected to occupy this position and that he missed President Lee equally with the rest of us. Then he reviewed much of the instruction which President Lee had given over the past years, and our prayers in behalf of President Kimball continued.
As he proceeded with his address, however, he had not spoken very long when a new awareness seemed suddenly to fall on the congregation. We became alert to an astonishing spiritual presence, and we realized that we were listening to something unusual, powerful, different from any of our previous meetings. It was as if, spiritually speaking, our hair began to stand on end. Our minds were suddenly vibrant and marveling at the transcendent message that was coming to our ears. With a new perceptiveness we realized that President Kimball was opening spiritual windows and beckoning to us to come and gaze with him on the plans of eternity. It was as if he were drawing back the curtains which covered the purpose of the Almighty and inviting us to view with him the destiny of the gospel and the vision of its ministry.
I doubt that any person present that day will ever forget the occasion. I, myself, have scarcely reread President Kimball’s address since, but the substance of what he said was so vividly impressed upon my mind that I could repeat most of it at this moment from memory.
The Spirit of the Lord was upon President Kimball and it proceeded from him to us as a tangible presence, which was at once both moving and shocking. He unrolled to our view a glorious vision. He told us of the ministry performed by the apostles in the day of the Savior, and how the same mission was conferred on the apostles under Joseph Smith. He demonstrated how these men had gone forth in faith and devotion and were clothed with great power, by which they had carried the gospel to the ends of the earth, reaching further, in some ways, than we with the strength of this modern church are doing at the present time. He showed us how the Church was not fully living in the faithfulness that the Lord expects of His people, and that, to a certain degree, we had settled into a spirit of complacency and satisfaction with things as they were. It was at that moment that he sounded the now famous slogan, “We must lengthen our stride.” (See Ensign, Oct. 1974, p. 5.) I doubt that everyone fully understands that directive even now. If it were put into the vernacular it would sound much more like: “Let’s get off our dime!” “Get going!” “Move!”
President Kimball bespoke other messages: “We must go to all the world.” “Every boy should go on a mission.” “Open the door to new nations.” “Send missionaries from Mexico, South America, Japan, Great Britain, and Europe.” (See “When the World Will Be Converted,” Ensign, Oct. 1974, pp. 2–14.) This was a new vision, disturbing and exciting, added to the old.
The thought came to me: “Imagine! At any moment the president might call any or all of us to go to distant lands or otherwise extend the preaching of the gospel.” I little realized that within six months I would be en route to Portugal for that very purpose.
President Kimball spoke under this special influence for an hour and ten minutes. It was a message totally unlike any other in my experience. I realized that it was similar to the occasion on the 8th of August, 1844, when Brigham Young spoke to the Saints in Nauvoo following the death of the Prophet Joseph. Sidney Rigdon had returned from Pittsburgh, where he had apostatized, to try to capture the Church. Many people testified, however, that as Brigham Young arose, the power of the Lord rested upon him to the extent that he was transfigured before them, with the appearance and the voice of Joseph Smith. That moment was decisive in the history of the Church, and the occasion of April 4, 1974, is parallel.
When President Kimball concluded, President Ezra Taft Benson arose and with a voice filled with emotion, echoing the feeling of all present, said, in substance: “President Kimball, through all the years that these meetings have been held, we have never heard such an address as you have just given. Truly, there is a prophet in Israel.”
Now I affirm that since April 1974 things have indeed not been the same. This is no attempt to eulogize President Kimball into a figure greater than other presidents of the Church, but to point out the continuing spiritual power which attends the prophet of the Lord, whoever he may be. But President Kimball has nevertheless launched us into a new perspective and is causing us to take giant strides. Since that day no one has worried the least little bit about who is the Lord’s prophet.

For years I had sent out packages of clothing at Christmas time to families whose need I had read about in a New York newspaper. I had also included some spiritually oriented reading material.
One holiday season my husband, Will, stopped to watch my preparations. “You’re spending a lot of money on postage,” he noted. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if I drove into the city with the packages? Our station wagon would hold a lot of them.”
I was excited at the idea! If he did that, I could send heavy winter clothing, too expensive to mail, and also food. Happily I went about gathering all I could, while Will got maps of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, and began to locate and schedule the stops on his route.
Early the day before Christmas, Will and our teenage boys loaded the station wagon, packing it to the roof. The day was cold and grey, but the only concession to the weather Will would make was to wear a cap. He held an office job and rarely spent time out of doors, yet he was confident that he’d be warm enough.
As I watched him back the loaded car out of the driveway, I was assailed by sudden doubts. What if the car broke down? What if he got lost? Or chilled? He was going into some of the most crime-ridden sections of the city—what if he were assaulted?
Turning back toward the house, I noticed that snow was lazily drifting down—an added worry. I went into the house and knelt down to pray for Will’s safe journey. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I began, “Will has gone on an errand for me—.” Then I stopped. I had the sudden impression that I had said something wrong. The thought came, “No, he has gone on an errand for Me.”
I was taken back by the thought. I had been thinking too highly of myself in assuming that Will had gone just for me, and that his safety depended on my prayers. At that moment, I realized that delivering the packages was his service to God, and he would be protected.
I got up, determined not to worry about Will any more, and went on with my holiday preparations. The snow that had begun so lazily in the morning was a blizzard by lunch time. In the afternoon I tried to walk to a nearby store but had to turn back because of the drifts. If they were impassable here, what must the roads be like in the city?
Dinner time came. Still no word from Will. He had said that he’d call me. My resolve not to worry was getting harder and harder to maintain. In the evening, when our sons came in from shoveling snow, one of them asked, “Isn’t dad home yet? Where can he be?”
“Mom,” said the other, “he can’t still be delivering packages at this hour. No one would let him in. I don’t want to worry you, but—.”
“He’ll be all right,” I assured the boys, but I was beginning to panic in spite of myself. Resolutely I worked at wrapping gifts, trying to ignore the kitchen clock which was now creeping toward eleven P.M.
Then one of the boys yelled with relief, “Mom, dad’s car is turning into the driveway!”
Excitedly, I grabbed a coat and went to meet him. As Will got out of the car, I noticed that he wasn’t cold and exhausted as I had pictured he would be. He looked as though he had been outdoors for a pleasant half-hour, instead of just having spent fifteen hours on snow-clogged streets, driving around abandoned cars and lugging packages up unshoveled walks.
“I didn’t have a bit of trouble,” he assured me, “and I found every family.”
That evening I gave thanks for my husband’s safe journey and for my increased understanding of the Lord’s ways.

Like many of you, I was baptized by water when I was eight years old, over a half a century ago. I remember a lot of the details about my baptism by water, in part because when I arrived at the chapel we discovered that they didn’t have any baptismal pants small enough to fit me. They brought me the same type of baptismal clothing that the two or three other girls were going to wear for their baptism on that day. They told me it was a tunic, but I knew it was a dress. I refused to put it on notwithstanding the efforts of my father and the priesthood leader who was conducting the baptismal service to persuade me otherwise. At some point an older man walked into the changing room, sensed my determination not to be baptized in what I knew was not a tunic, and then left only to return with two things in his hands. In one hand was a picture from the meetinghouse library of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus Christ. In his other hand was a rope. He told me that if I put on what they were calling a tunic, and tied the rope around my waist, I would look like John the Baptist and Jesus Christ in the picture. That made sense to me, so I was baptized in a tunic, not a dress, with a rope tied around my waist. I remember all of that. Here’s the part that troubles me. I don’t remember anything about hands being placed on my head and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost.

The day we interviewed Talon Hobbs of Franklin, Idaho, it was easy to see why he loved his small family farm so much. The hill behind their fields glowed gold in the sun and was plastered against the dark green of the mountains. The sky was intense blue. The air was clean and crisp, with the drifting scents of fresh hay and distant animals. It was the kind of day that makes you want to stand still and enjoy where you are and what you are doing.
In fact, that is exactly the reason Talon gives for wanting to go into the family business. At 18, he has learned from his father how to do virtually every job on the farm. “My dad tells me what I need to get done, but I can choose what I do throughout the day. It’s really quiet. You’re not stressed. You get to have your quiet time. That’s what I really like about it.”
But it’s not easy work. There’s no such thing as procrastination when chores need to be done and animals cared for. “I figure you might as well get the worst job done first, then you get to do the easier ones. There is always something to do.”
And what about when it’s winter, when it’s 20º below with the snow blowing? Talon shrugs because he doesn’t really see that as the worst thing. “You just have to deal with it.” He goes on to explain how his parents will give their hired hands the day off on holidays such as Christmas. “We used to groan and moan about it when we were little, but now it’s our family tradition to be on the farm on Christmas Day doing the chores together.”
Ironically, the only way that Talon Hobbs will get to own part of the family farm and the outdoor life he craves is by getting more indoor learning. “I’ve always wanted to farm, even when I was little. I wanted to have some of my own animals, but Dad didn’t want me to get too tied down. He wanted to give us the opportunity to go to college. I plan to go into animal science. I’d like to take some plant science classes, and learn how to add to the farm and make it better. I’ll need to learn some small business management. I figure it’s better for me to take classes than struggle my whole life trying to figure it out.”
In the meantime Talon is getting ready for another kind of advanced education, his mission. Looking back, his mission preparation has been going on for years. He tells of meeting a girl just as they were starting high school and how he admired how she stood up for the gospel. He says, “I saw that she could be strong at that age, and her example made me realize that I also knew the Church is true. It made me think. Choosing to follow the Church may not always be the popular thing to do, but it’s always the best.”

My senior year in high school was filled with student body responsibilities, classes, activities, and planning for next year at BYU. I felt my senior year was a time for me to evaluate and take stock, to plan for big changes in my life. And all my friends were getting contact lenses.
“It’s a whole new world!” Cheryl confided as we huddled in our band uniforms at the opening football game. “I can see things I never saw before!” I had to admit she looked much prettier, too. Her small Japanese features no longer hid behind the thick glasses she had worn for years.
I pushed my own glasses back up on my nose and considered the possibilities. If Cheryl and Carolyn and Ron and Celia could make the change, why couldn’t I? It couldn’t be all that big a deal.
Or could it? I pondered some more as my regular checkup with the ophthalmologist approached.
“Of course!” he reassured me. He could fit me with contacts. I would have them within two weeks, for a mere $200, including eye exam and fittings during the breaking-in period.
That, of course, was another problem. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money for my family in 1970. I didn’t want to waste it. What if I couldn’t get used to the contacts?
I thought some more as I bicycled home. Daddy’s business hadn’t been going well. On the other hand, I had a good part-time job. Maybe I could offer to pay part of the bill. Maybe I would have to pay for the whole thing. Would it be worth it? I decided it would.
“Absolutely not,” said Daddy. “No daughter of mine is going to wear contact lenses.” I argued that everyone was getting them. I argued that I would pay part of the cost. I argued that I would pay all of it. I argued that I had $200, and more, sitting in the bank at that very minute. I argued that the doctor thought he could correct my vision more accurately with contacts. I argued that my glasses pinched behind my ears. I argued that contacts would give me better grades in school. Daddy was adamant, totally unreasonable. He finally put his foot down and refused to listen any more. “I don’t want you to go through all that,” he said flatly. “No. Don’t ask again.”
I stormed to my room in tears. The fight had bolstered my resolve. Anger had replaced any squeamish fears I had entertained. I would show him! I was 17 years old. I had my own life to live! Nobody was going to have control over me, not while I had $200 of my own money in the bank. I fantasized that I would be beautiful, independent. I would even lose weight, maybe streak my hair. Boys would take me out. I would show that mean, old-fashioned man a thing or two!
The next day I made an appointment for another eye examination.
I felt very shy and embarrassed the day I returned home wearing my new contacts. My eyes seemed different and foreign. The feeling was not unlike the strange tingle I had in my fingertips on the rare occasions when I used nail polish. I felt naked without my glasses, but I was astounded at the clarity of my vision. And in my heart a lurking fear was beginning to grow.
My father was more surprised and curious than shocked and angry. “Please let me see them,” he said. I held out the tiny green disk on the tip of a finger. He stared at it almost reverently. “Is this all there is to it? It’s so tiny. Are you sure you can see with it?”
I felt smug, superior, vindicated.
His next question surprised me. “Didn’t it hurt your eyes when they poured the latex in?” What on earth was he talking about? Nothing of that sort had gone on at all.
“I want to show you something,” he said, beckoning. I followed him upstairs to his room. From the back of his sock drawer, he pulled out a hinged leather case and opened it. On the white velvet lining were two glass balls. No, not balls. I picked one up. Doll teacups, of clear glass, an inch in diameter and an eighth inch thick.
“These are my contact lenses,” Daddy said sadly.
I was horrified. “How could anyone wear those? Why they must cover the whole eyeball!”
“That’s right,” he replied. “I wore them three times.”
My mother peered over my shoulder. “One of the times was on his second date with me,” she said. “His poor eyes watered so much and he was so miserable I made him take them off.”
“They made them by propping my eyelids open with a metal brace and pouring liquid latex over my eyes,” he explained. “The molds were then used for the glass lenses, which fit tightly over the entire eye. It took all my courage to put them in. I didn’t want that to happen to my little girl,” he finished lamely.
Remorse filled my heart. Daddy had only been trying to protect me from the pain he had suffered himself, while I had thought he was being mean and unreasonable. I shuddered as I remembered my misery when the orthodontist had made latex molds of my teeth. Then I thought of the young man, 20 years earlier, who had endured incredible agony for the hope of being freed from the burden of thick, heavy glasses.
Daddy hadn’t realized that times had changed. His actions toward me had been motivated by memories of his earlier experiences. I understood better now the reasons for other restrictions he imposed upon his children. He had once been a young man. Events during those years had shaped his relationship with his family; and the family rules, fair or unfair, were influenced by those experiences.
I knew the remaining months I would spend in Daddy’s household were limited. I would soon begin a new life that would lead me away from home. Very shortly, my parents would not be responsible for my welfare, and I was sorry my new understanding of them had come so late. I wished I had been more considerate and teachable.

My school friend invited me to her birthday party. It was fun. We played games and dressed up like princesses. When it was time for dessert, we all gathered around the table for beautifully decorated cupcakes. As I was eating my cupcake, I was offered tea to drink. All the other girls were drinking tea in fancy little cups, but I knew it was wrong to drink it. I said, “No, thank you. I do not drink tea.” I felt good inside for keeping the commandments.

Over a year after his first meeting with the missionaries, with his parents in attendance to support him, Tyreece entered the waters of baptism and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is currently preparing to serve a mission, but more importantly, Tyreece can confidently declare: “Even though I started this journey for someone else, my testimony of the gospel is now my own.”
Tyreece’s progress in the Church has not gone unnoticed. At the end of 2022, he was asked to speak at the Auckland Papatoetoe Stake conference, where he bore his testimony:
“I know this Church is true. I know that when your faith in Heavenly Father is strong, He will bless you and your family for all eternity. I know that when you follow Heavenly Father’s commandments, He will guide you and your family to the right path . . . I have seen it with my own eyes and through experience. Now I want to help guide families towards Heavenly Father, so they can be together forever for all eternity.”

Illustration by Shauna Mooney Kawasaki
I worked days, and my wife, Elen, worked nights. We hardly saw each other. We weren’t holding home evening or family prayer. We went to sacrament meeting, but we lacked commitment to the gospel.
We began to feel emptiness that came from focusing on the things of the world instead of the things of the Lord. We felt that Heavenly Father wanted more from us.
So we went to the Santiago Chile Temple for guidance on how we could improve. We both received the prompting that we needed to move with our little daughters from Santiago to the northern coastal area of Coquimbo.
We had never been there before, and we knew nothing about the area. But we quit our jobs, sold everything, and said goodbye to family, friends, and my university studies.
In Coquimbo, we didn’t know anyone, and we didn’t have any money. I found a job, but it barely paid the rent. We asked, “Why are we here?”
Elen wondered if there was something she could do to help pay the bills. One day she sewed a new cover for one of our old chairs. “I’m going to put it up for sale and see if someone buys it,” she said. Someone did buy it. Encouraged, Elen learned more about reupholstering furniture. She started advertising and began receiving work.
In 2016, I was called as bishop of our new ward. With my job, my resumed university studies, and my calling, once again I hardly saw my family.
“This isn’t working,” Elen said. “Why don’t you work with me? I’ll teach you how. You’ll be home, and you’ll also have more flexibility for your calling.”
I worried about quitting my job, but Elen suggested that we pray to Heavenly Father and say: “Here’s our business. We’re going to do it together. Please illuminate for us how we can make it work while Gregorio serves as bishop.”
Heavenly Father answered. Now, after years of hardly seeing each other, we’re adjusting to always being together. Sometimes Elen jokingly says, “Don’t you have some bishopric interviews to do? Come back in four hours!”
Here in Coquimbo, we have learned to have faith and live the gospel as a family, and we have been blessed. We moved to a city we did not know to serve people we had not met, and we have seen miracles we did not expect.

He had no trouble getting up. The alarm would go off, and Chris Muraski was wide awake. Things to do, you know.
No, getting up was never the problem. Being where he was supposed to be was.
Here’s the scoop. At 5:30 A.M., Chris would get dressed, grab a banana, head out the door, and go straight for a couple of blocks. He then had a choice. He could continue driving for another block until he arrived at Libertyville High School in this Chicago suburb. Or he could hang a left and go to Libertyville’s civic center for early-morning seminary.
For two years Chris never used his turn signal on that morning drive.
As a freshman he attended seminary. He even went for part of his sophomore year.
But come on. He was an outside linebacker and he wanted to get stronger. Early-morning weight lifting—extra work on his own—would make him a better player. It was something he had to do.
Midway through that second year of high school, Chris decided he’d skip early-morning seminary even if it would make him a better person.
During the two years he was in the weight room, Chris got stronger and became a solid high school football player, playing for a very good team. The weight lifting was paying off. Unfortunately, injuries began occurring—more specifically, concussions.
“It’s ironic because that’s when the concussions started—when I stopped going to seminary,” he says.
The concussions, bruisings of the brain due to hard hits, were a bit scary because of both pain and memory loss.
The first concussion came during Chris’s sophomore year. He took a hit to the head that forced him to sit out the second half of a game. “It was like waking up from a dream. I couldn’t remember the plays before. I couldn’t remember where I was supposed to go. It took me 10 minutes to pull it all together,” he remembers. “I wanted to go back in during the fourth quarter but the coaches wouldn’t let me.”
Then during the second game of his junior season in 1997, after being cleared to play, Chris took another hit to the head and the result was another concussion. This time it was a bit more serious. It was a kickoff return, and Chris came in for the tackle. Much of that play is a foggy memory, but he does remember this vital statistic: the guy that leveled Chris was six-foot-six and 250 pounds.
“The guy that hit me was huge. I just went full blast into him, and that pretty much ended my season right there,” he says.
It’s worth mentioning that despite the extra work in the weight room, Chris only tipped the scales at a lean 152 that year. It was hardly a fair fight.
After sitting out much of the season on doctors’ orders, Chris played in one more game, then sustained a third concussion in practice. “That was it. I didn’t know if I would even be able to play the next year. The doctors were concerned, and I didn’t want to mess up my brain,” Chris says. “I didn’t feel very confident that I’d be fine, that I wouldn’t have any more problems.”
Chris, at the time a priest in the Buffalo Grove Second Ward, Buffalo Grove Stake, thought often about his love for football. Would he ever play again? Would there be any long-term effects from the blows to the head? These were all questions a high school junior didn’t want to face.
That summer Chris’s bishop approached him. He didn’t want to talk about football. Instead he asked him, “So, Chris, how’s seminary coming?”
But the bishop already knew the answer. When he asked Chris if he would start attending again, Chris said, “No, probably not.” The weight lifting was still too important. At least that’s what he thought.
“I was still active. I was going to church every week. I wasn’t in the gutter,” he explains. “But I wasn’t doing all the little extra things.”
Like going to seminary.
Chris began thinking about his choices, about seminary, about his future. And it wasn’t like he disliked seminary the one year he did regularly attend.
Later the bishop approached Chris again. He had something important to tell him. Chris said that the bishop talked to him and promised him that if he would go to seminary, the Lord would bless him and he wouldn’t have problems with concussions. But Chris needed to aim for 100 percent attendance.
“When he said what he said, I thought, I’ll do it. So I put my faith in what the bishop promised me right there.”
On the first day of seminary to begin the 1997–98 school year, there sat Chris Muraski.
He’d finally made the left turn.
Chris missed exactly one day of seminary last year—because of a conflict with wrestling. But he made that day up. He also didn’t miss one football game during a year when he was one of Libertyville’s team captains. Last summer he earned a spot on an Illinois all-star team that traveled to Australia.
And he never came close to getting another concussion.
“I regret putting lifting in front of seminary,” he says now. “Every morning I was at seminary I felt I was in the right spot, and I got that spiritual flavor that kind of gives you that boost. I feel more spiritual. My testimony has grown from it, from striving to be better.”
Once upon a time Chris was bench pressing 240 pounds. Today it’s down to 200.
Yeah, he may have lost 40 pounds off his bench press, but after returning to seminary, Chris was still plenty strong.

In July of 2004 I was getting ready to climb the Middle Teton. A few days prior to the climb I noticed that my left ear was hurting. I assumed that I must have an ear infection, and so I went to one of the urgent care facilities here in Rexburg, thinking they would verify it was an ear infection and give me a prescription to take care of it. A nurse told me that I had no infection and said that I had a lot of wax build-up in my ear and the pressure caused by this was probably why my ear was hurting. The nurse cleaned the ear out and immediately the pain went away. Soon afterwards, the doctor came in and affirmed that everything looked fine inside my ear. While talking with me, the doctor said, “When your eyes blink, your left eye is blinking different than your right eye. Have you noticed this?” I replied that I was unaware of this. He asked, “Have you had any numbness or anything else happening with the left side of your face?” I told him that a few months earlier I had noticed that the left side of my mouth didn’t seem to be working right. I hadn’t thought to do anything about it. The doctor thought that maybe I had Bell’s palsy, but indicated that he wanted me to have an MRI done on my head to see if anything unusual showed up. I went to our local hospital and had the MRI, and through this process we learned that I had a brain tumor. The tumor was pressing against my seventh cranial nerve, causing the issues with my eye and mouth. You can imagine that all of my family members were pretty upset and worried after finding out about this tumor. It’s interesting that I think that I was the only person in my family that wasn’t really worried. I had some insight that no one else had. I never once felt any worry about the tumor being cancerous or this being a life-altering or life-ending experience for me. I wasn’t worried, because I knew from my patriarchal blessing that there were still events and things in my blessing that hadn’t yet come to pass. I took this as a sign that I still had years of life ahead of me and that this was just another bump in the road of life. I bear witness that patriarchal blessings are a witness that God our Father lives and that He is well acquainted with you and what your needs are. Patriarchal blessings are an intimate, loving, and amazing gift from an all-knowing Heavenly Father.

After looking at my MRI, the neurologist in Idaho Falls that I visited told me that he couldn’t really do anything for me, but he said, “I know a doctor at the University of Utah that will know what to do.” Within a couple of weeks, I was in Salt Lake City visiting this specialist. During the course of our visit, the doctor was talking about the upcoming surgery and said that in the process of the surgery they would be taking the bones and other things in my left ear apart, and then would put everything back in place at the end of the surgery. He told me that after my surgery I may have some balance and equilibrium problems that might prevent me from ever climbing a mountain again. Anyone that knows me very well would understand that this would have been devastating to me, because climbing mountains had become a passion of mine. Several months later I had the tumor removed, and everything has been great since. I wanted to prove the doctor wrong about my climbing, and the following summer I was able to summit Mount Rainier and also set my personal best time in climbing the Grand Teton. If you haven’t received your patriarchal blessing, I encourage you to do so now, and treasure it as a revelation from God written just for you.

Sister Louella Norberg was visited by Kathy Peterson, Joele Chafant, Deanna Peterson, and Kiku Okauchi. Kathy said of the visit, “Joele, Deanna, Kiku, and I met outside her apartment and were standing there wondering how we should approach her when she stuck her head out and called, ‘Yoo-hoo, girls! Here I am!’ and invited us in to see her. It was fascinating. She told us things that happened over the years, and I really enjoyed it. I know she liked it a lot too because she kissed us all before we left.”

My family joined the Church when I was a boy. A few weeks after our baptism, my father had a dream. He was walking on a beautiful street. In the distance he saw a magnificent white house. He had never seen such an inspiring building.
He shared his dream with our family the next morning. He also shared it with the senior missionary couple who taught our family the gospel. The senior missionaries told him that the house in his dream was a symbol. It stood for the temple.
They showed him pictures of some of the Church’s temples around the world. They said that one day a temple would be built where we lived, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the rest of his life, my father prayed that a temple would come to our country.
After 25 years, the dream came true. In the October 2011 general conference, President Thomas S. Monson announced plans to build the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. The announcement made my father the happiest man on earth! He was overjoyed to be present on February 12, 2016, when Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over the groundbreaking ceremony.
Unfortunately, my father passed away in December 2016, before the completion of the temple. In June 2018, I was in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. In the Jordan River Utah Temple I was able to perform the sacred temple ordinances in behalf of my father. That night, my father visited me in a dream. He was shining with light. I knew that he had accepted what I did for him.
We thought of my father fondly when Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles dedicated the completed Kinshasa temple on April 14, 2019. A short time later my family performed ordinances to seal my father and mother to each other. Then their children were sealed to them. Our family will remember that day forever. We shed tears of joy. We knew that if we obeyed God’s laws and commandments and lived faithful to our covenants, our family could be together forever.