Gospel Story Finder

Laurels from Garland, Utah, got to know several women in their ward by becoming a “secret granddaughter” to them. Each girl chose a woman from the ward and then spent three weeks leaving small surprises and sending good wishes through the mail. During the fourth week, the girls interviewed their grandmothers about their lives. At the end of the activity, the Laurels gave a dinner party honoring their grandmothers.

The girls provided much-needed fellowship for the sisters, many of whom are in poor health. And they had a great time doing it. “This is the most fun activity we have ever planned,” said one Laurel.

A little rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the youth in the Springfield Fifth Ward, Eugene Oregon Stake, as they participated, as a ward, in Eugene’s annual Christmas parade. Taking their cues from the parade’s theme of “Home for the Holidays,” the youth called their float “Home for the Holy Days.” The youth wanted to convey a message about the true meaning of the holiday, so they created a family home evening-type scene on their float complete with children re-enacting the Nativity, a picture of the Savior, and a family reading the Christmas story from the Bible. The youth who weren’t actually on the float walked alongside singing Christmas carols.

The story is told that in ancient Rome a group of women were, with vanity, showing their jewels one to another. Among them was Cornelia, the mother of two boys. One of the women said to her, “And where are your jewels?” to which Cornelia responded, pointing to her sons, “These are my jewels.” Under her tutelage, and walking after the virtues of her life, they grew to become [great men] Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus … two of the most persuasive and effective reformers in Roman history. … Said Isaiah of old, “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isa. 54:13).
I humbly pray for that peace in behalf of all children.
When you learn about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, it brings peace to your heart. It helps you to know that you can keep the commandments and do what is right. Remember to think of Them often, and remember that They love you.

In March 1946 Elder Ezra Taft Benson, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, visited Czechoslovakia. He was pleased to find that the Czech people were cheerfully at work and that the Church had been as resilient as the country. Ten baptisms had been performed during the war. When Elder Benson inquired at government offices about reopening the mission, he found that the Church had an excellent reputation and would be welcomed back. On 28 June 1946, three missionaries reentered Czechoslovakia, including Wallace Toronto, who had never been released as president. Members had waited seven long years for this reunion.

I hate going to the doctor. I always dread the fuss, the wait time, the shots, the orders to “take it easy.” When I was really little, I thought nurses and doctors were just mean people who thought I was a pin cushion, but as I got older I figured out they weren’t evil; they were helping. And I almost always felt better soon after seeing them. No matter how boring the waiting room was, how much I yelped getting a shot, or how disappointed I was when the doctor told me I needed to stay off my feet, in the end, it was always worth it.

Now consider if you had looked on FamilySearch for the ancestor you didn’t know and saw some pictures of him. Perhaps he looked very much like your grandfather. Perhaps there was a story that talked of how during one rainy season, there was a big flood in his village. His home washed away, one of his children died in the flood, and his fields were ruined. He didn’t have anything left to support his family, so after praying, he migrated with his family to the city, where he struggled but eventually found work to support and feed his family.

What a special day for Andrea! She was going to school for the very first time.
“I painted a picture of a tiger,” she said, racing into the house after school. “I listened to a story about a big brown bear, and I even have my own hook for my jacket. Can I go to school again tomorrow?”
“Yes,” her mother replied.
The next day when Andrea came home, a smile covered her face from ear to ear. “We went on a nature walk,” she said. “I found three bugs, two sticks, and a purple flower. I even have a new friend, named Samantha. Can I go again tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Andrea’s mother said with a smile.
The next afternoon, Andrea raced up the stairs two at a time. “Mom!” she hollered. “Guess what? We have a gerbil in our classroom. He lives in a glass case, and we named him Patches. I even drew a picture of Patches. Do you want to see?”
“What a handsome gerbil,” Mother said, admiring Andrea’s picture.
“Can I go to school again tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mother replied.
The next afternoon, Andrea skipped into the house and plopped down at the table for milk and cookies. “We saw a movie about a lost polar bear,” Andrea said, wiping her mouth after a big gulp of milk. “Samantha and I played ball at recess. I had sixteen bounces without a miss! Can I go to school again tomorrow?”
Mother nodded and bit into a cookie.
The next afternoon, Andrea sang all the way home from school. “Oh, Mom,” she said, hugging her mother, “I made a truck using scissors and glue and lots of colored paper. And you should’ve seen the tower I built with blocks. Before it fell, it was this high.”
“That’s a mighty tall tower,” Mother said, looking at Andrea’s upraised hand.
“Can I go again tomorrow?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Andrea,” Mother replied. “You can’t go to school tomorrow.”
Andrea’s eyes widened, and her smile melted away. “But I want to go to school,” she said, blinking hard. “School is fun.”
Mother knelt down and put her arm around Andrea. “School is fun,” she said. “But you can’t go tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because tomorrow is Saturday,” Mother explained with a hug.
“Saturday!” Andrea said with a laugh. “Oh, I forgot! But can I go to school again on Monday?”
“Yes,” Mother told her. “You can go to school on Monday.”
“Good,” Andrea said, and she raced outside to ride her bike.

The final experience I’d like to share is about repentance. After I had finished taking all the missionary lessons, I was still not convinced I needed to change anything in my life. It was Elder Cutler, a young, confident missionary with limited Spanish, who one day said, “Joaquin, let’s read together Alma 42, and we will include your name as we read it.”

I thought it was silly, but I did as Elder Cutler asked and read in verse 1: “And now, my son [Joaquin], I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your mind, which ye cannot understand.” Oh! The book was speaking to me.

And we read in verse 2: “Now behold, my son [Joaquin], I will explain this thing unto thee,” and then the Fall of Adam was described.

And then in verse 4: “And thus we see, that there was a time granted unto [Joaquin] to repent.”

We continued reading slowly, verse by verse, until we reached the last three verses. Then I was struck by a powerful force. The book spoke directly to me, and I started to cry as I read, “And now, [Joaquin,] my son, I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more, and only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you … unto repentance” (verse 29).

I realize now that I had expected to receive revelation without paying the price. Until then I had never truly spoken to God, and the idea of speaking to someone who wasn’t present seemed foolish. I had to humble myself and do what I was being asked to do even if, in my worldly mind, it sounded silly.

That day I opened my heart to the Spirit, desired to repent, and wanted to be baptized! Before that moment, I had thought of repentance as something negative, associated only with sin and wrongdoing, but suddenly I saw it in a different light—as something positive that cleared the path to growth and happiness.

Elder Cutler is here today, and I want to thank him for opening my eyes. Every decision I have made in my life since then has been influenced by that moment when I humbled myself and prayed for forgiveness, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ on my behalf became part of my life.

More than 150 years ago, a 17-year-old was called by the Lord to introduce the restored gospel to the infant colony of South Australia, where his mother and stepfather were emigrating. William James Barratt of England was ordained by Elder George A. Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve in July 1840. He set sail soon afterward, and began his missionary work in Australia just ten years after the Church was organized.
Elder Barratt had no Missionary Training Center experience, no companion, and his mission president was half a world away in Liverpool, England. It took a whole year for him to get an answer to his letters to Church leaders. He did not even have a copy of the Book of Mormon.
“I feel like a lamb among wolves, going into a land of strangers to preach the gospel,” he wrote.
Yet with the vigor of youth, he came, he served, he testified. And he baptized Robert Beauchamp, who later became president of the Australasian Mission (Australia and New Zealand), and who in turn baptized at least 150 others.

Brother Tony Wong was assigned to speak during a stake priesthood meeting. “I think the stake presidency wanted me to talk about whether emigration was right or wrong. But I didn’t know,” he says. He read books, checked references, and prepared for two weeks, but the night before the meeting, he still had no idea what he was going to say.
“I decided I’d better do something, so I knelt down and prayed. Then I opened up the scriptures.”
Again, the answer and comfort were found in Ether: “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God” (Ether 12:4).
“The reason for emigrating is looking for a better world,” Brother Wong explains. “People think it will be safer, nicer, or happier somewhere else. This scripture made me realize something. When I talked at that priesthood meeting, I didn’t talk about emigration—I talked about belief in God and Jesus Christ.
“If you ask me if I am going to emigrate, I’ll tell you no. People are worrying and fearing, but we’re forgetting that we have the gospel, we have the Helper. The gospel offers hope and the assurance that Heavenly Father knows what is going on and that he is in charge.”

When a choice plant became root bound and began to deteriorate, a young friend of ours decided to transplant it to a larger container. Carefully he lifted the greenery from its small pot and put it into its larger home, trying to disturb the roots and soil as little as possible. The novice gardener watched and waited. To his dismay, the plant still struggled. Our friend expressed his frustration to an experienced gardener who offered his services. When the plant was placed in the gardener’s hands, he turned the pot upside down, pulled out the plant, shook the soil from the roots, and clipped and pulled all the stragglers from the root system. Replacing the plant into the pot, he vigorously pushed the soil tightly around the plant. Soon the plant took on new life and grew.

Seminary students from four wards slip quietly from their homes in the dark stillness of the hour before dawn. The chill of fall in the air encourages them to run quickly to the warmth of a waiting car, already half-filled with other sleepy teens and leaders. The city will not wake for another two hours, and only a few delivery trucks and early commuters compete with the caravan of trucks and cars carrying the Latter-day Saint youth out of the city and up the serpentine road to Cerro de la Gloria.

By the time the group arrives at the top of the mountain, a faint, orange-pink glow is visible above the horizon in the east; but the “Hill of Glory” is still guarding its treasure. In the gray light of predawn, a hymn is sung, a prayer is offered, and the students begin this day’s study of the gospel. Only then does the darkness give up its secret—streaks of red and orange fill the sky as the sun reveals the glory of the panorama surrounding today’s mountaintop classroom. The majestic peaks of the Andes Mountains on the west and the sweeping plains surrounding the city on the east display the glorious work of the Creator.

In this idyllic setting—much different from their ordinary classroom—these young men and young women in Mendoza, Argentina, are spiritually fed and fortified to face the challenges of another day. As the sun rises higher, the spirit of the morning begins to transform to the concerns of the day, but the students linger a moment and talk about the blessings of having the gospel in their lives.

Over the years, I have found that the things I learned about the temple as a young missionary in Ohio have blessed my family and me. For example, in the temple a year after we were married, my wife, Amy, and I received an impression that it was time to have a child. We were students, and because of tight finances I was tempted to cast the prompting aside. But the Lord was preparing us.
We had three miscarriages over the next two years, and I wondered, “Why the prompting to have children if we’re not able to have them?” Then we moved to California, worked with a fertility specialist, and finally had our first child, Mackenzie.
By following the inspiration we received in the temple, we began a process that took three years. If we had not followed the prompting when we did, it would probably have been at least another three years before we had our first child. We count that experience as a blessing of preparation and revelation.
We had a second child, Emma, but then we had another miscarriage and the loss of our son, Stewart. In subsequent months and years, as we sought peace, we learned that most of the symbols in the temple point us to the Savior and the healing balm only His Atonement can give.
I am grateful for the blessings of the temple. I testify to you that it is a place of preparation, revelation, and peace.

When I was a boy, my maternal grandfather had a large cherry orchard. I had the opportunity to work in the orchard, mostly in the summer during the harvest of the cherries. As a very young boy, I found that the extent of my involvement was being handed a bucket and then sent up a tree to pick the cherries.

The harvesting of cherries changed significantly when my grandfather purchased a machine called a cherry shaker. This machine grabs the trunk of the tree and shakes it, causing the cherries to fall out of the tree onto nets that are used to collect the cherries. I noticed that when the shaker would begin to shake the tree, almost all the cherries fell out of the tree within seconds. I also noticed that it didn’t matter if the tree was shaken for 10 seconds or a full minute, some cherries would not fall. They were truly unshakable.

Illustrations by Kellan Stover
It was my first time hanging out with my new friends Becky and Sarah. I was so excited! Becky’s mom dropped us off at the bowling alley, and I followed Becky and Sarah inside. I could smell hot dogs and hear something clattering in the background.
“I’ve never been bowling before,” I admitted.
“Don’t worry,” Becky said. “It’s easy.”
“And fun!” Sarah added.
They led me to a counter, where we checked out special bowling shoes. Then we found our lane and put the bowling shoes on.
I picked up a bowling ball. It was a lot heavier than I thought it would be. Sarah showed me how to put my fingers in the holes in the ball. Then Becky showed me how to roll it down the lane.
On my first try, my ball didn’t hit any pins. But after a few turns, I got the hang of it. One time, I even knocked over all the pins at once!
“Nice!” Becky gave me a high five. “That’s called a strike.”
When the game was over, I went with Becky and Sarah into the bathroom. They unlaced their bowling shoes. Then Becky shoved the shoes behind the garbage can.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Becky grinned up at me. “This is part of the fun. We always sneak out without paying!”
I froze, feeling my stomach clench. “What about the money your moms gave you?”
“We keep it,” Sarah said as she slipped her regular shoes back on. “Come on, hide your shoes too.”
My heart was beating fast. I knew it would be wrong to not pay. But I didn’t want Becky and Sarah to get mad at me. I wanted them to like me.
Heavenly Father, I prayed silently, please help me be brave enough to do the right thing.
I took a deep breath. “I can’t do that. It would be like stealing.”
Sarah put her hands on her hips. “I thought you were our friend!”
“I am,” I said. “But I don’t want to steal.”
Becky frowned. “My sister will be here any minute to pick us up. Just ditch the shoes and let’s go!”
“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” Sarah said. “We do this all the time. Besides, no one will ever know.”
But I would know, I thought. And Heavenly Father would know.
I shook my head. “I’m gonna go pay for mine.”
Becky pursed her lips. “Then I guess we can’t be friends.” She and Sarah pushed past me and out of the bathroom.
After they were gone, I got their shoes out from behind the garbage can and took all the bowling shoes back to the counter.
“How was the game?” the man at the counter asked. “And where did your friends go?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Turns out they weren’t really my friends.” I told him what happened and pulled out the money my grandma had given me. “I can pay for all of us.”
“That’s OK. You can just pay for yours.” The man took the money and gave me my change. “Thanks for being honest. I’m sure your parents would be proud of you.”
I called my grandma to come get me. As I waited, I thought about what the man had said. A warm feeling spread through me. I knew it was the Holy Ghost letting me know I’d done the right thing. I could find friends who would help me choose the right.

Brushing up on their service skills meant the youth hauled woodchip-filled wheelbarrows, wielded paintbrushes, and picked up trash at a park near their stake center. They toted their trash bags to a nearby school to beautify it as well. Some of the youth also went to a rest home and played games with and sang to the residents.
Jane Wilson, a Laurel, really enjoyed serving in her stake. She says, “It’s kind of hard to choose the right with all the bad influences around you.” But you can tell when you’re doing what you should because of “the joy you feel when you’re doing what’s right.”

Latter-day Saints know that revelation and prophecy have foretold the spread of the gospel throughout the world in the latter days. Few realize, though, how clearly this has been manifest in Korea. Not a single Korean national was a member of the Church until 1951, but today, little more than a generation later, South Korea has fourteen stakes and a temple.
Much of this growth must be attributed to the work and influence of modern-day pioneer Kim Ho Jik.
Born 16 April 1905 in the province of Pyeongan Buk-Do (now part of North Korea), Kim Ho Jik moved south as a teenager to attend school in Suwon, a farm town south of Seoul. He graduated from Suwon Advanced Agricultural and Forestry School in 1924, then earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Tohoku University in Japan, graduating in 1930. His comparatively advanced education allowed him to rise quickly to positions of influence. After his return to Korea, he became president of Sukmyeong Women’s University. Then, in 1946, he was appointed director of the Suwon Agricultural Experimentation Station.
Kim Yeon Jun, a former colleague and now president of Hanyang University in Seoul, remembers that “the thing he [Kim Ho Jik] seemed most concerned about was finding ways to improve the quality of life for Koreans.” Kim ho Jik focused his research on ways to improve nutrition in the Korean diet.
But he longed to learn more about the latest theories and discoveries in agriculture. American scientists who worked with him at the experimentation station encouraged this desire, pointing out that Korea desperately needed well-educated leaders in science and education. Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, wanted to send him to America to learn more efficient ways of feeding their country’s malnourished population. So Kim Ho Jik made plans to enroll at Cornell University in New York, which had one of the world’s top graduate study programs in nutrition.
A yearning for education was not the only passion that filled his heart as he journeyed to the United States in 1949. Since his youth he had been interested in religion and had investigated several churches. None had satisfied his spiritual hunger. As a boy, he had looked into different religious movements. He also studied in a Buddhist monastery. In 1925, he joined a Protestant church and became an elder in that organization.
Han In Sang, an early Latter-day Saint convert in Korea and now director of the regional Presiding bishopric Office in Seoul, recalls: “Dr. Kim had great faith in orthodox Christian concepts, such as Jesus Christ as the Savior, but he had some dissatisfaction with other aspects of the Protestant churches—the theological confusion and the false doctrines, like predestination.” The sudden death of his third son in 1935 had deepened Kim Ho Jik’s longing for spiritual satisfaction.
Long before he came to America, he believed in the Spirit of God and sought its guidance. His faith served him well just before he left his homeland, when he felt compelled to sell his beautiful home, his cars, and his other possessions. He gave the cash raised from these sales to his wife and children to live on. To critics of this apparently purposeless act, Kim Ho Jik replied only that the Spirit had instructed him to do so.
A few months after he arrived in America, the reason became clear. War broke out with the North Korean invasion of June 1950. Bombs destroyed his former home, and the South Korean government confiscated all automobiles for use by the military. But Kim Ho Jik’s family remained financially secure in his absence.
Kim Ho Jik hoped the Spirit would help him find the “true church” in America. While he completed a doctoral degree at Cornell, he attended meetings of various churches in and around Ithaca, New York. But the answer he was seeking lay at his very doorstep.
The Korean educator shared an office with Oliver Wayman, a doctoral candidate in physiology. Like his office companion, Oliver Wayman was older than most of the other graduate students. He also happened to be a Latter-day Saint.
The two men became good friends. Their wide-ranging discussions, however, did not include religion—until one day shortly before Brother Wayman was to leave Cornell, when his Korean friend asked if he had any literature about his church.
“I have never seen you smoke or drink,” Kim Ho Jik told Brother Wayman. “I have never heard you use vulgar language or profane the name of God. You work harder and longer hours than any of the others, but I have never seen you here on Sunday. You are different in so many ways. I wonder if you would tell me why you live as you do?”
Brother Wayman gave him a copy of The Articles of Faith by Elder James E. Talmage. Kim Ho Jik read the book within a week. “He told me it was the best book on the gospel he had ever read and that he believed it thoroughly,” Brother Wayman recalls. Given a copy of the Book of Mormon, the Korean read it quickly and reported to his American friend that he believed it to be the word of God. It was, he said, more complete and easier to understand than the Bible.
Though Kim Ho Jik responded favorably to Latter-day Saint doctrine, he still believed his Protestant church could reform itself from within by incorporating some of the teachings of the Church. He began to attend the local branch, but also continued to attend his Protestant meetings.
On Brother Wayman’s last day at Cornell, he was saying good-bye to friends when Kim Ho Jik approached him. Brother Wayman felt impelled to ask the Korean why he had decided to leave his homeland and family to study in the United States. The Korean scholar responded that he needed the new knowledge in nutrition available at Cornell for the benefit of his people.
Then, Brother Wayman recalls:
“I bore my testimony … and told him that it was my opinion that the Lord had moved upon him to come to America … in order that he might receive the gospel and take it back to his people in preparation for a great missionary work to be done there. … I informed him … that if he refused to do the work the Lord had for him … another would be raised up in his place.”
Brother Wayman never saw Kim ho Jik again, but he left New York “sure that the Spirit which touched me when I bore my testimony to him touched him at the same time. I could see a change in his expression.”
Kim Ho Jik’s outlook had indeed changed. He continued to study the gospel avidly, but now with an eye toward baptism. Don C. and General Wood, Seneca District missionaries who taught him, recall, “As soon as we would begin any type of review with Brother Kim, he would hold up his hands and say emphatically, ‘No, no, I have already accepted that. Let us go on.’”
His was particularly receptive to a discussion of the Word of Wisdom. As Elder Wood finished reading the eighty-ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, tears flowed down Brother Kim’s cheeks.
“Oh,” he sobbed, “if only I had known all of this when I came here. My government wanted me to find ways to feed our people properly, and without sufficient grazing lands for cattle, we did not know how to do this. My whole time studying in America has been to find ways to feed our people through the grains the Lord has always intended for us to use.” Brother Kim accepted the Lord’s health code wholeheartedly.

As they walk through the Kiev Botanical Gardens, Lilia Velbivets and Aliona Papilenkova explain. “Youth in the Church are a lot like those trees,” Lilia says. “We shelter each other, we protect each other, and together we grow straight and true.”
Lilia talks about her family’s growth in the gospel. “My mother and I met the sister missionaries, and we were excited to learn about another testament of Jesus Christ (the Book of Mormon). But my father was an atheist and slower to convert.” As the family took the discussions regularly, however, her father’s heart was touched. All three were baptized on the same day.
“The next year was wonderful as we prepared to go to the temple (in Freiberg, Germany) to be sealed as a family,” Lilia continues. “When we arrived I felt like I was at home, because the temple is the house of God and we are His children.”

“While presiding over the Ukraine Kyiv Mission, I once asked one of my most faithful sisters why she was always so hard on herself, why she was always beating herself up over the smallest things. Her answer was a classic example of someone listening to the wrong voice as she replied, ‘So no one can beat me to it.’
“Brothers and sisters, my counsel to this sister missionary is my counsel to you: acknowledge and face your weaknesses, but don’t be immobilized by them, because some of them will be your companions until you depart this earth life. No matter what your current status, the very moment you voluntarily choose honest, joyful, daily repentance by striving to simply do and be your very best, the Savior’s Atonement envelops and follows you, as it were, wherever you go. Living in this manner, you can truly ‘always retain a remission of your sins’ (Mosiah 4:12) every hour of every day, every second of every minute, and thus be fully clean and acceptable before God all the time.”

The young women in one ward were inspired by the teachings of Sister Elaine S. Dalton, Young Women general president, on virtue: “Now is the time for each of us to arise and unfurl a banner to the world calling for a return to virtue.”1 The young women hiked a hill overlooking the town and raised gold banners symbolizing their pledge to be examples of virtue. Together they sang “High on the Mountain Top” (Hymns, no. 5).
These young women have raised their personal standards of righteousness. Their obedience has strengthened their testimonies and influenced others. Sister Dalton has said, “Never underestimate the power of your righteous influence.”2 And like a banner, the example of these young women waves to all the world.