Gospel Story Finder

Martín felt sad when his parents told him the family was moving to a different city in Colombia. He didn’t want to leave his friends, his home, and the place where he grew up. Instead of cool mountain air, Martín would now live close to the ocean with hot, humid air all year round. He would trade hot soups for cold drinks, and coats for shorts. Add to that a new school, a new ward, and a new Primary class! It all seemed pretty scary.
One day Mom and Dad asked Martín how he felt about the move.
“I don’t like it,” Martín said. “I don’t want everything to change.”
“I know moving can be hard,” Dad said. “Lots of things will change, but not everything. You’ll still have us!”
“That’s true,” Martín said.
“And we will bring our things with us,” Mom said.
Martín thought about that for a minute. He would still have his clothes, his shoes, and his favorite toys. Martín was glad he could take his toys. He packed them away extra carefully when they moved.
After a while, Martín started to get used to his new home and new city. The move wasn’t as hard or scary as he thought it would be.
One Sunday, when his family went to church, Martín noticed a lot of people he had never seen before. Primary was full of new kids. He wondered where they came from. He heard people he knew talk about donating food, clothes, and shoes. After church, Martín asked Mom about all the new people.
“They had to leave their country,” Mom said. “Many of them left everything behind except what they could carry.”
“So that’s why everyone wants to help them?” Martín asked.
“That’s right. Jesus taught us that we should help people who are in need. We can follow His example and share what we have.”
Martín thought about that. He wanted to follow Jesus!
Then Mom said, “Many of the Primary kids had to leave their toys behind. Do you think you have some toys you could give?”
Martín would be happy to share his shoes or his clothes. But his toys?
“No! Those are my toys!” Martín said. He turned and ran to his room.
Martín looked around his room with tears in his eyes. He didn’t want to give away any of his toys. He’d brought them all the way from his old house!
He went to his toy box and looked inside. He saw his toy truck, his yo-yo, his trompo (spinning top), and his best bag of marbles.
Then Martín thought, What if I had to leave all of these behind? And my home and country too?
The more he thought about that, the more Martín knew what he wanted to do.
A few minutes later, he came up to Mom with his arms full of toys—not just any old toys—but the ones he always played with.
Mom looked surprised. “You don’t have to give away your favorite toys.”
Martín set the toys on the floor. “The other kids had favorite toys they had to leave behind,” he said. “I want them to have mine so they can be a little happier.”
Mom gave Martín a hug. “I’m so proud of you.”
Martín had a warm feeling inside. He knew giving to others is what Jesus would do, and that made him happy.

Jeffrey Yee, 11, and his younger brother Ryan, 6, performed the parts of James and Joseph Kirkwood. James was one of the young heroes of the pioneer trek. He, his mother, and his three brothers had come from Scotland, and they set out together to cross the plains with their handcart. James took care of his four-year-old brother, Joseph. When Joseph was too tired to walk any farther on Rocky Ridge, James carried him. When they finally got to the camp, James set his little brother down safely by the campfire. James died beside the fire from the cold and exhaustion.
“I think that he was very responsible and brave. His little brother must have been grateful for a brother to look up to,” Jeff says about his character. “Because he was kind to his little brother, he helps me know it’s not nice to make fun of my little brother. He usually needs help because he is so young, so I try to help him.”

Shortly after I had started working in the safety office, Janine and I were attending a concert in the Hart building and I was truly enjoying the experience, but during a break in the performance, my mind started to wander a little about what would happen if we needed to evacuate this performance. So after looking around to find the nearest exit—which is often not the same one you came, in by the way—I turned to Janine and proceeded to explain to her that: “If we have to evacuate, we will use that exit door right over there, and if someone becomes unresponsive, I want you to go down these stairs right here and call 911 and grab the AED that is right above the phone.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to tell her about my whole plan when she looked back at me with a confused look on her face and asked, “What are you talking about!?” I quickly realized that having a plan is a good idea, but immediately sharing it with someone—especially in the middle of a concert—may not be the best idea. So we went back to enjoying the rest of the concert and sure enough, we didn’t even have to use my quickly conceived emergency plan. (Hopefully all of you listened to the announcement just before devotional started today and found your nearest exit.) I often think about that experience and wonder why it seemed so important to me in that moment to have an emergency plan and I have decided that, if not necessarily a normal thing to think about, having an emergency plan is always a good idea, no matter what situation I find myself in.

Many times the things that we think are terribly disconcerting to us and that we don’t really deserve are the things that make us great. I had a cancer on my lip when I was eighteen years old. The doctor said it was caused from continuous exposure to the sun. If I stayed in the sun, he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t return. I love to farm, but I didn’t like it that much, and so I left the farm. I had to, just as did the Saints who came to the Salt Lake Valley. (President Tanner says the Saints came of their own free will, because they had to.) That’s the reason I left the farm. I left of my own free will because I had to. A short time later I was back in the navy living out in San Diego, California, and along came two young missionaries who knocked on the door. I don’t think they ever would have found me back in Missouri. Not where I was, back there on the farm, anyway. If I hadn’t had that cancer, I probably would not be here today. I’m glad I had it. The quality of refusing to be defeated will make winners of us all.

When I was fifteen years old I decided to buy a Bible. A spirit of restlessness had developed in me and I felt a great need to find answers concerning the reasons for existence.
I frequently gazed into the heavens and at the stars, wondering where God lived and what kind of being He was. When I read the words of Jesus in the Gospels, I believed them to be true. I recognized the path I should take. I loved the scriptures and I was not afraid of sharing this great joy of mine with others.
One principle that had great impact on me was the principle of faith, together with the various gifts of the Spirit: the gifts of healing, miracles, and revelation. I was convinced that if a person could have enough faith, he could truly move mountains.
I was so overcome by all this that I tried to share my joy with all of my friends. Franco, my dearest friend, was the first with whom I shared my beliefs and the results of my studies. We spoke often of the mystery of life. My other friends, however, did not show the same interest in these things.
Though I discussed these things with my friends, I had essentially embarked on this path alone, refusing to join any organized religion because I believed that I would be able to find my answer by increasing my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I felt a definite “progression” as I received confirmation of the things I learned through my reading. But this knowledge led to other questions for which I could find no answers.
One day, as I continued my search for truth, I found a book among several books at home: the Book of Mormon. I do not remember how it had come to be there. Possibly some missionaries had left it with my mother several years earlier when they were in our neighborhood.
As I began reading the Book of Mormon, I noticed that something wonderful and very real was happening in me. I sensed that the Author of the sacred scriptures I had already learned to love was also the Author of these new scriptures I had just found. These new scriptures confirmed the truth of the things I had read previously.
The greatest blessing I experienced was that all the questions that had arisen in my mind while studying the Bible, were answered while studying the Book of Mormon. It provided me with greater understanding by giving added light to Biblical scriptures.
The fact that we have the Book of Mormon in these latter-days confirmed my belief that God still performs miracles.
One day I received a visit from some ministers. I proceeded to show them the miraculous way in which God had once again given to man, through an angel, another collection of scriptures. One of them told me that all these things were manifestations of the devil. I could not share that opinion. I felt great harmony in everything I had read. At that time, I did not know of Ezekiel’s prophecy. I had taken the two “sticks,” the one of Judah (the Bible) and the one of Joseph (the Book of Mormon) and made them one in my hand and in my heart. (See Ezek. 37:16.)
All this had taken place without my knowing which church used the Book of Mormon. It was not until I was eighteen that I became acquainted with missionaries who taught from the Book of Mormon while they were conducting a street meeting in the center of Milan, Italy.
A few months later, guided and sustained by the scriptures, I was baptized into the Lord’s Church.

I learned recently of loving service given to a mother when her children were very young. Frequently she would be up in the middle of the night tending to the needs of her little ones, as mothers do. Often her friend and neighbor across the street would come over the next day and say, “I saw your lights on in the middle of the night and know you were up with the children. I’m going to take them to my house for a couple of hours while you take a nap.” Said this grateful mother: “I was so thankful for her welcome offer, it wasn’t until this had happened many times that I realized if she had seen my lights on in the middle of the night, she was up with one of her children as well and needed a nap just as much as I did. She taught me a great lesson, and I’ve since tried to be as observant as she was in looking for opportunities to serve others.”

When a commercial came on the radio that started saying the Lord’s name in vain, my mom turned the station as quickly as she could. It bothered us a lot that they would use the Lord’s name in that way. We wrote a letter to the advertiser telling them we were offended about how they used the Lord’s name. They wrote back and apologized. Within a few days, the commercial was changed.
Gavin Z., age 7, California

I also remember attending a meeting near Bancroft, Idaho, years ago. It was sponsored in part by the extension service of the University. We’d had a wonderful meeting, and after it was over, I was greeting some of the wonderful farmers who were there, and among them was a man by the name of Brother Yost, and I said, “Brother Yost, how are things out on the farm?” Brother Yost said, “Oh, things are fine, Brother Benson, but I’m about 20 thousand dollars worse off than I was three days ago.” I said, “What’s the matter—another frost?” He said, “Yes, it hit the wheat just in the dough stage, and you know what that means.” He said, “We’re starting the mowing machines in the morning, but everything’s all right. We’ve still got a little wheat in the bin, and we’ve got at least part of our year’s supply laid away. We’re not going to starve, and there’ll be another crop.” As we left him, I said to my wife, “What a wonderful spirit.”
We drove on down to Logan. We had our children with us, and we stopped on Main Street to go into a grocery store to pick up a few cookies for the kiddies. And who should I meet on the sidewalk but Brother Yost. I said, “Well, what are you doing way down here?” He said, “Brother Benson, it’s our day to go to the temple.” And I said, “Well, reverses don’t dampen your spirit any, do they?” Then he taught me a lesson. He said, “Brother Benson, when reverses come we need the temple all the more.”

Sisters have key roles in the Church, in family life, and as individuals that are essential in Heavenly Father’s plan. Many of these responsibilities do not provide economic compensation but do provide satisfaction and are eternally significant. Recently a delightful and very capable woman on a newspaper editorial board asked for a description of the role of women in the Church. It was explained that all of the leaders in our congregations are unpaid. She interrupted to say her interest had diminished significantly. She said, “I don’t believe women need any more unpaid jobs.”

We pointed out that the most important organization on earth is the family, where “fathers and mothers are … equal partners.” Neither one is financially compensated, but the blessings are beyond description. We of course told her about the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary organizations that are guided by women presidents. We noted that from our earliest history both men and women pray, perform the music, give the sermons, and sing in the choir, even in sacrament meeting, our most sacred meeting.

The recent highly acclaimed book American Grace reported on women in many faiths. It noted that Latter-day Saint women are unique in being overwhelmingly satisfied with their role in Church leadership. Furthermore, Latter-day Saints as a whole, men and women, have the strongest attachment to their faith of any of the religions studied.

Our women are not incredible because they have managed to avoid the difficulties of life—quite the opposite. They are incredible because of the way they face the trials of life. Despite the challenges and tests life has to offer—from marriage or lack of marriage, children’s choices, poor health, lack of opportunities, and many other problems—they remain remarkably strong and immovable and true to the faith. Our sisters throughout the Church consistently “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.”

One Relief Society president who acknowledged this extraordinary service said, “Even when the sisters serve, they are thinking, ‘If only I could have done more!’” Though they are not perfect and all face individual struggles, their faith in a loving Father in Heaven and the assurance of the atoning sacrifice of the Savior permeates their lives.

During the last three years, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve have sought guidance, inspiration, and revelation as we have counseled with priesthood and auxiliary leaders and worked on the new Church handbooks. In this process I have experienced feelings of overwhelming appreciation for the essential role that sisters, both married and single, have historically played and now play both in the family and in the Church.

All members of the Church of Jesus Christ are “to labor in his vineyard for the salvation of the souls of men.” “[The] work of salvation includes member missionary work, convert retention, activation of less-active members, temple and family history work, … teaching the gospel,” and caring for the poor and needy. This is administered primarily through the ward council.

Specifically, it is intended in the new handbooks that bishops, sensitive to existing demands, will delegate more responsibilities. Members need to recognize that the bishop has been instructed to delegate. Members need to sustain and support him as he follows this counsel. This will allow the bishop to spend more time with the youth, young single adults, and his own family. He will delegate other important responsibilities to priesthood leaders, presidents of auxiliaries, and individual men and women. In the Church the role of women in the home is highly respected. When the mother receives a Church calling that requires significant time, the father will often be given a less-demanding calling in order to maintain balance in the lives of the family.

Several years ago I attended a stake conference in Tonga. Sunday morning the three front rows of the chapel were filled with men between 26 and 35 years of age. I assumed they were a men’s choir. But when the business of the conference was conducted, each of these men, 63 in total, stood up as their names were read and were sustained for ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood. I was both pleased and stunned.
After the session I asked President Mateaki, the stake president, how this miracle had been accomplished. He told me that in a stake council meeting reactivation was being discussed. His stake Relief Society president, Sister Leinata Va‘enuku, asked if it would be appropriate for her to say something. As she spoke, the Spirit confirmed to the president that what she was suggesting was true. She explained that there were large numbers of wonderful young men in their late 20s and 30s in their stake who had not served missions. She said many of them knew they had disappointed bishops and priesthood leaders who had strongly encouraged them to serve a mission, and they now felt like second-class members of the Church. She pointed out that these young men were beyond missionary age. She expressed her love and concern for them. She explained that all of the saving ordinances were still available to them and the focus should be on priesthood ordinations and the ordinances of the temple. She noted that while some of these young men were still single, the majority of them had married wonderful women—some active, some inactive, and some not members.
After thorough discussion in the stake council, it was decided that the men of the priesthood and the women of the Relief Society would reach out to rescue these men and their wives, while the bishops spent more of their time with the young men and young women in the wards. Those involved in the rescue focused primarily on preparing them for the priesthood, eternal marriage, and the saving ordinances of the temple. During the next two years, almost all of the 63 men who had been sustained to the Melchizedek Priesthood at the conference I attended were endowed in the temple and had their spouses sealed to them. This account is but one example of how critical our sisters are in the work of salvation in our wards and stakes and how they facilitate revelation, especially in family and Church councils.

We recognize that there are enormous forces arrayed against women and families. Recent studies find there is deterioration in devotion to marriage, with a decrease in the number of adults being married. For some, marriage and family are becoming “a menu choice rather than the central organizing principle of our society.” Women are confronted with many options and need to prayerfully consider the choices they make and how those choices affect the family.

When I was in New Zealand last year, I read in an Auckland newspaper of women, not of our faith, struggling with these issues. One mother said she realized that in her case, her choice about whether to work or stay home was about a new carpet and a second car that she didn’t really need. Another woman, however, felt “the biggest enemy of a happy family life was not paid work—it was television.” She said that families are TV rich and family-time poor.

These are very emotional, personal decisions, but there are two principles that we should always keep in mind. First, no woman should ever feel the need to apologize or feel that her contribution is less significant because she is devoting her primary efforts to raising and nurturing children. Nothing could be more significant in our Father in Heaven’s plan. Second, we should all be careful not to be judgmental or assume that sisters are less valiant if the decision is made to work outside the home. We rarely understand or fully appreciate people’s circumstances. Husbands and wives should prayerfully counsel together, understanding they are accountable to God for their decisions.

You devoted sisters who are single parents for whatever reason, our hearts reach out to you with appreciation. Prophets have made it clear “that many hands stand ready to help you. The Lord is not unmindful of you. Neither is His Church.” I would hope that Latter-day Saints would be at the forefront in creating an environment in the workplace that is more receptive and accommodating to both women and men in their responsibilities as parents.

You valiant and faithful single sisters, please know that we love and appreciate you, and we assure you that no eternal blessing will be withheld from you.

The remarkable pioneer woman Emily H. Woodmansee penned the text of the hymn “As Sisters in Zion.” She correctly asserts that the “errand of angels is given to women.” This has been described as “nothing less than to do the direct and immediate bidding of our Father in Heaven, and ‘this is a gift that … sisters … claim.’”

Dear sisters, we love and admire you. We appreciate your service in the Lord’s kingdom. You are incredible! I express particular appreciation for the women in my life. I testify of the reality of the Atonement, the divinity of the Savior, and the Restoration of His Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I am a first-generation university student. I am almost finished with my second certificate, and then I will finish my associate’s and bachelor’s degree. With every certificate or milestone, my self-esteem increases and my fear of the future decreases because I feel I am one step closer to securing a better future. Because I know I am nothing without God and this inspired program, I have learned to be humble and kind. I have extended helping hands to many other PathwayConnect students to give back. I created a WhatsApp group for PathwayConnect students around the globe to help them through tips and video demonstrations each week. Now, whenever I think about what lies ahead, I can’t help but smile and be eternally grateful for an inspired program called PathwayConnect.

Easing the pain of losing a child is difficult, if not impossible. But after hearing Sister Read tell her story during a youth conference meeting, and hearing another talk given by Kevin Capener, a young father who lost an infant son, the youth in the North Ogden Utah Ben Lomond Stake were eager to do anything they could to help. So, as a youth conference activity, they decided to “blanket” a local hospital with service.
The nearly 400 young people attending the conference spent an afternoon making more than 500 infant quilts to be given to parents whose newborn babies have died. After the parents have held their baby in the blanket for the last time, the blanket can be kept as a reminder to the parents.
“I hope that this blanket will be used, held, and cherished,” says Mark Miller, a priest. “I want [the parents] to know that there is someone out there who cares about them.”
In just a few short hours, the youth had a stack of quilts ready and waiting to be presented to a representative from Ogden’s McKay Dee Hospital.
It may seem a little thing, making tiny quilts for parents to use after the loss of a child. But sometimes the things people do aren’t measured by the size of their service, but rather, by the size of their hearts.

The Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio, is much the same as it was 150 years ago. The white frame house faces a wide front lawn on a quiet back road in the Ohio countryside. In 1832, a real mob stormed down that road. They broke into the house and dragged the Prophet into the nearby fields. They beat him, choked him, scratched him, smeared him with tar and feathers, and tried to force liquid tar down his throat.
After the mob left, Joseph stumbled back to the house, where Emma fainted at the sight of her husband. In the dark, the tar looked like blood. For the remainder of the night, friends helped Joseph remove the tar and clean his wounds.
Tired, sore, and ill, he still stood the next morning on the front steps of the Johnson home and preached a sermon. Present in the crowd were some of the men who had been in the mob the night before. But the Prophet did not mention what had happened. Instead, he told about the glorious things that God had revealed to him.

Just after 2:00 a.m. on October 26, 2003, Daniel Olsen, 17, hears his mother telling him that a wildfire is less than a mile away. “I jumped out of bed, but the power was out, so I couldn’t find my shoes,” he remembers. “My younger sister, Kelli, yelled, ‘What good are shoes if you’re dead?’” He grabbed his gym bag and ran out of the house barefoot.
Outside, Daniel can smell the smoke, see the oak trees silhouetted against the orange sky, and feel the ash in 50-mile-per-hour (80-km-hr.) winds swirling around him. “We started driving down Wildcat Canyon and said a prayer,” he says. “My mom honked the horn to wake others. I sang, ‘We are as the armies of Helaman’1 as loud as I could. It made me feel better.”
Daniel’s and Matthew’s houses were among the 2,232 lost during 11 days as this fire, named the Cedar Fire, burned more than 280,000 acres (113,300 ha) and killed 14 people, most of whom died in Wildcat Canyon. Twelve other fires were burning at this time in southern California, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate.
Daniel and Matthew, like other LDS youth affected by the fires, are emerging stronger as they learn that the gospel eases suffering during a crisis.
“Our relationship with the Savior survives everything,” says Daniel, who found comfort in the words “He that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still” (Morm. 9:14).

One of my favorite comic strips involved Lucy. As I remember it, Charlie Brown’s baseball team was in an important game—Lucy was playing right field, and a high fly ball was hit to her. The bases were loaded, and it was the last of the ninth inning. If Lucy caught the ball, her team would win. If Lucy dropped the ball, the other team would win.
As could happen only in a comic strip, the entire team surrounded Lucy as the ball came down. Lucy was thinking, “If I catch the ball, I will be the hero; if I don’t, I will be the goat.”
The ball came down, and as her teammates eagerly looked on, Lucy dropped the ball. Charlie Brown threw his glove to the ground in disgust. Lucy then looked at her teammates, put her hands on her hips, and said, “How do you expect me to catch the ball when I am worried about our country’s foreign policy?”
This was one of many fly balls Lucy dropped through the years, and she had a new excuse each time.2 While always humorous, Lucy’s excuses were rationalizations; they were untrue reasons for her failure to catch the ball.

Some of the first forks were brought to Europe from Byzantium, a rich and powerful empire to the east. About a thousand years ago a Byzantine princess came to live in Venice, a city in Italy. She ate with a fork. The priests thought her way of eating was so fancy that it was sinful. They scolded her. They preached against her in church. Soon afterward, the princess caught a terrible disease and died. Many people believed that she was punished for using her fork.

“Once when I was three years old, I was playing with a group of youngsters and we found a box of matches. We decided to light them just for fun. As we were striking them, one fell on me and set my clothes afire. I still have scars on my leg and abdomen as a result of our misbehavior. In those days, doctors didn’t know as much about caring for burns as they do now. As my leg began to heal, the burned tissue and muscle drew up, and my knee wouldn’t straighten out. Every day my parents and the doctor would lean on my knee and try to straighten it a little bit. Then I wore a splint for many months, and finally my leg straightened out. I won a lot of footraces afterward, but it was foolish for us to have played with those matches in the first place.”

Elder and Sister Kearon acquired that sacred knowledge after the birth of their first child, Sean.
During Sister Kearon’s first pregnancy, the couple learned early on from ultrasound scans that their baby boy had “a difficult heart anomaly, a life-threatening condition,” says Elder Kearon. “We spent the rest of the pregnancy tracking down the best doctors, cardiologists, and cardiac surgeons equipped to address his particular problem. We found a world-class team in London, and they were confident they could fix the problem.”
Surgeons operated on Sean when he was 19 days old. The surgery was long and painstaking. Afterward, says Elder Kearon, “Sean’s little heart could not restart. So, we lost him. His death was exquisitely painful. This was not the result we had fasted for, prayed for, and pled for, but we knew that heaven’s hand was in that experience.”
Sister Kearon says, “God led us through those months of pregnancy and the beautiful, brief life of our son in a way that, at the end of it, we knew we had done everything we could for him. That was a tremendous comfort.”
Healing came from an increased understanding of the Savior’s Atonement and Resurrection that Sister Kearon gained from an in-depth study of 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi. “In the grief of our loss, I felt like I was spinning in a black hole,” she says. “And yet, time after time, that free fall was arrested by the rock of the Atonement of Jesus Christ—because it is true. His grace, His living reality, make even the most painful losses bearable and hopeful.”
Healing came from the birth of the couple’s three daughters. “They brought healing with them,” Elder Kearon says. “They are the most beautiful light in our lives, our greatest treasures.”
Healing came from the words of inspired Church leaders, including a general conference talk by Elder Lance B. Wickman, in which Elder Wickman shared the pain of pacing deserted hospital corridors as his own little boy lay dying of a childhood disease. “Elder Wickman teaches that ‘believing is seeing’ and that faith is trust in the Lord,” says Elder Kearon. “His talk was enormously valuable to me because of his clear understanding of such an experience. This was magnified by the number of times I read it and listened to it.”

Now it’s Ben Griffiths’s turn, and he shares a story with a different twist.
“I was living in a basement apartment—my own room, my own kitchen, a pretty sweet deal. But I wasn’t surrounded by those people that keep you on the right path. It’s tough and you start feeling like you are alone. You come to a point where you have to decide for yourself what you want to do.
“I wasn’t going to church and I wasn’t paying attention to the things I should have. Then my sister invited me to an institute class she was going to. It was about feasting on the words of Christ. The teacher challenged us to study the Book of Mormon for 30 minutes a day. I would pray and ask the Lord to help me. Then I would read and write down the thoughts that came to me. Then I would thank the Lord for what he had given me.
“Pretty soon, it changed my life. It put everything back in perspective. We’re trying to get to the celestial kingdom. That’s the reason we’re here. All these things happening around us aren’t going to make much difference in the long run. But the gospel gives you a goal in life, a place to point to. I started going to church again. I started doing the things I should have been doing, because I knew they were right.
“College can either be a place where you just play around, or it can be a place where you straighten out your priorities. You have to learn that the things that matter most are the things that will stay with you always, and that’s the gospel and your family. Stay close to them and you’ll be happy.”

After a recent mission tour in Indonesia when I visited the missionaries and the Saints on the island of Java, I had to catch an early morning flight to Singapore, and I checked out of the hotel at 6:00 A.M. In order to go to the airport, I, with my luggage, climbed into a taxi that was parked near the hotel entrance. I told the driver to go to the international airport, but alas, his car would not start. Apparently the battery was dead.
Well, what do you do in such a case?
Many thoughts crossed my mind. I calculated that it would probably cost me much time to unload my luggage and find another taxi, and it also occurred to me that the taxi driver was trying hard to make an honest living for his family and would be very disappointed if he could not make that lucrative half-hour trip to the airport.
I made the decision to do my morning exercises by pushing the taxi, leaving the Indonesian cab driver behind the steering wheel to start the car. However, he greatly overestimated the early morning physical power of a flying Dutchman and released the clutch of the car before I had been able to give the car adequate speed. As a result, it came to a sudden halt. But I gave it another try, and this time it worked. With a roaring motor the taxi moved forward. I flung open the door, jumped in, and we were on our way.
An hour and a half later when I boarded my flight, the air hostess who greeted me at the door of the plane said: “I am surprised to see you here! You are the gentleman who pushed the taxi in front of the Borobudur Hotel this morning.”
I confirmed that this was true, and she then told me that all the members of the plane crew had witnessed the scene from the airport limousine parked at a side door of the hotel. They had been waiting for their driver to bring one more piece of luggage. She said that on the way to the airport they had talked a lot about the incident and had wondered: “What makes this man tick? If he can afford to stay in the Borobudur Hotel, why would he take the trouble to push a taxicab at 6:00 A.M. in the morning?”
I thought, “This is my chance to do missionary work!” I took a name card out of my wallet, handed it over to her, and said, “We in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in sound human relations.” What a great opening line for a missionary!
Well, to cut a long story short, the air hostess told me she was not actually a stewardess but was flight services instructor for Cathay Pacific Airways and had boarded this flight to evaluate the performance of some students she had taught in the cabin crew training school in Hong Kong. That enabled me to make another statement about the Church: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest educational institution in the world today. At least 2 million people teach one another on a weekly basis with divinely inspired lesson materials.” I further explained to her that a great deal of my time is spent in teaching missionaries and members of the Church in the nine missions of Southeast Asia.
She remarked: “Then you are maybe the man we are looking for—an experienced air traveler with the ability to teach our personnel involved in ticketing, reservations, check-in counter work, baggage claim area assisting, etc., how to get along well with customers.” I told her that I would gladly do it free of charge whenever they planned another initial or refresher course in Hong Kong and when these dates would not interfere with my other Church assignments. I thought then and there: “What a golden opportunity to use that beautiful book Spiritual Roots of Human Relations, written by Brother Stephen R. Covey of Brigham Young University, to let these people know what makes Mormons tick!”
After my return to Hong Kong, I was approached by the training manager of the airline, who had received a report from the flight services instructor. I made an appointment and spent a couple of hours with him in his office. He was greatly impressed by the work and the achievements of the Church.
I am sure I will have the opportunity to reach out to many souls in the future simply because of what the world observed when they saw the Church in action one early morning in Jakarta, Indonesia.

For years, Aarika’s grandparents Raymond and Marilyn Perez supported Aarika and her brother, Aaron, as they went to church. But becoming members themselves wasn’t in the Perez’s plans. “I’m not going to become a Mormon,” Marilyn would tell her granddaughter. And the granddaughter would just smile because she had other ideas.
When Aaron left as a missionary to the Chile Santiago South Mission, Aarika began inviting her grandparents to church, and the Perezes accepted the invitations. Meanwhile Aaron wrote them letters from the mission field.
“And when Aaron got home from his mission, things got more and more serious about the Church,” Aarika recalls. Not long after that, what they said wouldn’t happen did. Raymond and Marilyn were baptized in December 1999.