Gospel Story Finder

As I prepared for my daughter’s wedding, my mind was so occupied with wedding plans that I rarely thought of anything besides my checklist. One morning I looked at my long list of tasks. I was making progress, but I still needed to do some deep cleaning. I had been putting off cleaning the kitchen blinds, so I decided to tackle that chore.
As I climbed on the counter with my rags, brushes, and cleaner, I could see that it was going to be a dirty job. While I worked, my mind wandered to the story of Martha and Mary, the sisters who had welcomed the Savior into their home. While Martha “was cumbered about much serving,” Mary “sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word.” Martha asked Jesus to tell her sister to help with the chores, but the Savior told her that “Mary hath chosen that good part” (see Luke 10:38–42).
“Today I will just have to be Martha,” I thought. The truth was that I had been Martha for several weeks, “cumbered about” with mundane chores and wedding preparations.
My mind wandered again, and I tried to remember when my blinds had last been cleaned so thoroughly. I thought of the two girls who had come to help me get ready for a gathering at my house two years earlier. Together they had scrubbed my kitchen from floor to ceiling, including the blinds. That memory reminded me of their mother, an old friend I hadn’t talked to in years.
At that moment I picked up the phone and dialed her number to tell her about my daughter’s wedding. I didn’t expect her to answer because she taught school, but I happened to call during her planning hour. We spent the next hour laughing, crying, and sharing. She had recently been through a difficult divorce and had been feeling alone and abandoned. As we talked, our spirits were lifted and our hearts were comforted.
I marveled at the way the Lord was able to work through me even while I was doing something as mundane as cleaning blinds. I marveled even more at the truth that He knows and loves each of us enough to send help at the very hour and moment we need it.
That night I smiled as I put a check mark on my list next to “clean the kitchen blinds.” Though I felt a sense of satisfaction from completing the chore, I felt a greater sense of gratitude knowing I had been an instrument in the Lord’s hands. He had shown me how I could be a Mary who chose the “good part” even as I was a Martha “cumbered about” my chores.

Children are so capable of learning the significant things of the kingdom. As we listen to them, we can better understand how they are applying what they are learning about the gospel. A father explained to his four-year-old daughter that the family had spent most of the day cleaning the house and every room was clean except one.

“Do you know which room is not clean?” he asked her.

“Mine,” she quickly replied.

“Do you know anyone who could help clean your room?” he asked, expecting her to answer that she could.

Instead she replied, “Well, Daddy, I know that any time you are scared, worried, or need help, you can get down on your knees and ask Heavenly Father to help.”

It is interesting to note that as we listen to our children, they can also teach us. A father shared an experience he had with his eight-year-old daughter. He said: “While I was contemplating remarks for my sacrament meeting talk on ‘Becoming like Little Children,’ I asked my daughter why we needed to become like little children. She responded, ‘Because we are all little children compared to Jesus, and because little children have a good imagination.’”

Surprised by the last part of her answer, he asked why we need a good imagination. She replied, “So we can imagine Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, and when we take the sacrament we can think about Him.”

As in all things, the Savior set the example for us in how we should love and teach our children. When He appeared to the Nephites in the Western Hemisphere, the scriptures tell us that as He spoke to the people, “he wept, … and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them.”

Referring to this occasion, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “There is no more tender and beautiful picture in all of sacred writing than this simple language describing the love of the Savior for little children.”

The key to accomplishing effective gospel teaching in the home is to invite the Spirit of the Lord to be with us. Some of the best counsel my husband and I received during some turbulent times of raising our children was to do all that is possible to invite and keep the Spirit in our home. Children cannot learn spiritual things and have spiritual feelings without the guidance of the Spirit.

As parents, we can share our testimony of Jesus Christ with our children often. The bearing of testimony, whether during family home evening or in a teaching moment, will invite the Spirit. President Boyd K. Packer also instructs us to “teach our young people to bear testimony—to bear testimony that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, that the Book of Mormon is true.”

President Hinckley reassures us: “Of all the joys of life, none other equals that of happy parenthood. Of all the responsibilities with which we struggle, none other is so serious. To rear children in an atmosphere of love, security, and faith is the most rewarding of all challenges.”

I know—with an exclamation mark—that children can receive a witness by the Spirit that brings conviction and commitment to their hearts! I bear witness that this is our charge, this is our opportunity: to diligently teach and testify to our children of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they might also hear the “voice of gladness.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Once my brothers and I were sledding down the hill in our backyard. My older brother said it was time to go inside, but I said, “Once more, please!” Both my brother and I had a bad feeling about it, but he pushed me down the hill anyway. I ran into a tree and had to get seven stiches in my chin. I know that bad feeling was the Holy Ghost warning me. I should have listened!
Madelyn G., age 8, Idaho

There came a time, early in my mission, when I knew that I had to know whether the Church was true and Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I felt what President Thomas S. Monson expressed so clearly in our last general conference: “If you do not have a firm testimony of these things, do that which is necessary to obtain one. It is essential for you to have your own testimony in these difficult times, for the testimonies of others will carry you only so far.”4 I knew what was necessary. I needed to read the Book of Mormon with a sincere heart, with real intent, and ask God whether it is true.
Listen to our Heavenly Father’s remarkable promise given through the prophet Moroni: “When ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”5
In order to receive what was in the Book of Mormon, I needed to read it. I started at the beginning of the book and read every day. Some receive a witness very quickly. For others, it will take more time and more prayer and may include reading the book several times. I needed to read the entire book before I received the promised witness. However, God did manifest the truth of it unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost.
In my missionary journal, I described my joy in knowing the truth as well as my personal expression of commitment and real intent to act on the truth I had received. I wrote: “I have pledged with my Father in Heaven and with myself to do my very best, to give it 100 percent for the rest of my life, whatever I am asked, I’ll do, but for now I have the rest of my mission and I am going to make it a great mission, one that I won’t feel bad about, but not for me, for the Lord. I love the Lord, and I love the work, and I just pray that that feeling will never leave me.”
I came to know that constant nourishment and continuing effort to repent and keep the commandments are needed to never have that feeling leave. President Monson said, “A testimony needs to be kept vital and alive through continued obedience to the commandments of God and through daily prayer and scripture study.”6

My life hasn’t always been easy. I started experiencing symptoms of social anxiety and depression as a teen and was diagnosed with ADHD in high school. When I was about 15 months into serving my full-time mission, I started experiencing suicidal thoughts. Soon after, I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder.
I found myself facing a difficult decision. My mission president and I talked about me going home where I could get the help I needed. But I couldn’t help but feel frustrated with the Lord. I felt like my desire to stay and continue serving the people I had come to love was a righteous desire.
Eventually, I learned that there were people the Lord needed me to meet at home and that there were opportunities for my broken heart to be healed. And I’ve come to know that my missionary service was accepted by Him.

It was late on a Saturday night, and everyone in my family was tired after a long weekend. To make things worse, my dad was once again out of the country for his job. I was about to go to bed when I realized that my mom was cleaning! As she worked, she began to sing a song by the Beach Boys: “Help me, Rhonda; help, help me, Rhonda.” A bit puzzled, I asked my mom why she was singing that song. She explained that since no one else would help her clean our house, maybe Rhonda would.
I suddenly realized that I was being completely unfair to my tired and overworked mother. I dropped what I was doing and said, “Mom, what can I do?” She replied, “Well, if you could rinse and put the dishes in the dishwasher, I would really appreciate it.”
When I finished the dishes, I did a few other small jobs. By the time everything was done, it was about 11:00 p.m. My mom was sitting on the couch for a minute to get some energy back, so I walked over to her and asked if there was anything else I could do.
She shook her head. Then with a tired but grateful smile she said, “Thank you … Rhonda,” and gave me a hug. Though I had helped lift my mom’s burden that night, I knew that I had given her just an hour of my time, compared to the thousands she willingly gives to my family. It was one hour I wouldn’t have wanted to spend any other way.

Catherine’s faith was mighty, and she had many occasions to exercise it. On one occasion when Miles was away, three-year-old Junius, their third child, suffered so terribly with an ear infection that she feared he would die. Desperately she prayed for help and felt inspired to ask the stake patriarch to bless him. Wrapping up her son, she carried him to the patriarch who, in the blessing, promised Catherine that if her faith was strong enough, Junius’s ear would bother him no more and that he would become a great leader in the Church. Even while he spoke, Junius stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep, for the first time in weeks. He raised a family of six children and became president of the Juarez Stake in Mexico before he was thirty.

On a recent trip to New Zealand, I met with a mission president who wore a beautiful tie tack with the inspiring CTR, or “Choose the Right,” emblem. “When I was a bishop,” he explained, “[I] had an interview with a good-looking young man who was to receive the Aaronic Priesthood. He told me a special story. He related to me how one day after school, he and some of his friends found a package of cigarettes. They decided to go down on the cliff alongside some large boulders and smoke them. They lit up, and the young man said that as he was looking down at the smoldering cigarette that he held between his fingers, he saw his CTR ring. He quickly put the cigarette out and made a very wise choice—to never, ever do such a thing again. He chose to choose the right, as he remembered what the emblem stood for. From this story I gained a special love for the CTR emblem.”

Grandpa learned to harness horses by helping his father. By the time he was eight, he could harness a dog to a small cart and ride around his parents’ dairy farm. By the age of twelve he could harness his family’s horse to a two-seater cart. Harnessing requires more, however, than just knowing how to put on the harness. You have to know how to train and handle horses and how to get along well with them. And you have to practice your skills often. You need to learn how horses are likely to behave in certain situations, and you must study each horse’s temperament. It takes patience, a good memory, and love.

When my friends Brother Chen and his wife were baptized into our ward, I was overjoyed. A year after their baptism, they were sealed in the temple, and their son who had passed away before they joined the Church was sealed to them. It was wonderful to see the Chens grow in the gospel.
Then Brother Chen was killed in a car accident the next year. Following the accident, his death seemed to always be on my mind and often haunted my dreams. I woke up in tears and asked over and over again, “Why? Why does the Lord allow this kind of tragedy to happen? Why does such a thing have to happen to this beautiful family?” One day, when I was struggling with these questions, I picked up a lesson manual and read these words from President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985):
“If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective. …
“Are we not exposed to temptations to test our strength, sickness that we might learn patience, death that we might be immortalized and glorified?”1
At that moment, I decided to let go of my sorrow and look into the promised and possible future. I saw in my mind’s eye Brother Chen happily reunited with his family. That sight brought me peace. I know that Heavenly Father will give us the wisdom and courage to face adversities.

When missionary couple David and Theresa Nish, from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, noticed a need for improved oral hygiene for children living in Saint Lucia, they knew it was time to do something about it.
Enlisting the help of the Church’s Welfare and Self-Reliance Services Department, young Latter-day Saint volunteers, the Saint Lucia Government and local school administrators, the Dental Hygiene Project was born.
The young women were given the responsibility of purchasing the supplies needed for the dental hygiene kits. They began by enquiring at various shops to find the best value for their money.
Eventually 3,200 toothbrushes, 3,200 tubes of toothpaste and 3,200 plastic cups were purchased and then assembled into 3,200 zipper-lock plastic bags for distribution by the Nishes to local primary schools.
The project was funded by Latter-day Saint Charities which receives donations from Latter-day Saints and others around the world.
“There are few dental facilities or clinics in the communities,” Sister Nish says. “And when they get dental decay and their teeth fall out, that is it, they don’t have any more teeth.”
“We found they weren’t brushing their teeth adequately” David says. “We realized if we got involved at the primary school level there was probably a better chance for children to understand about oral hygiene.”
The Dental Hygiene Project has been moving forward since January 2020 under the direction of the couple, and now includes primary and special-ed schools.
The Nishes’ work with school leaders to set up appointments to teach the children and distribute the dental hygiene kits.
They delight the younger children with role play and stories that teach why brushing your teeth is important.
“The response and gratitude from the local school administrators for the Church’s help has been overwhelming,” David said. “Most were astounded that we gave the dental kits out with no strings attached.”
The Dental Hygiene Project is one of many service projects with which the couple have been involved. Missionaries for just over a year in Saint Lucia, the Nishes spend their days and most evenings looking for ways to serve the people.
“We work with people. We talk to people, we hear what their problems are,' Sister Nish says.
Elder Nish continued, “A lot of what we do—we don’t know why we do it at the time—but a month or two or three months down the line it just all seems to fall into place. It really is not us, it’s the Lord working through us.”

• In Otavalo, you step off a dirt road at the edge of town and walk through a patch of corn to a tiny, two-room home. Juan José Muñoz, second counselor in the presidency of the Otavalo Ecuador Stake, lives here with his wife, Laura, and their four children. Sister Muñoz is Relief Society president in their ward.
In 1986, the Muñoz family traveled to the Lima Peru Temple to be sealed. They could not have made it without the Lord’s help, President Muñoz says. For more than a year, they had put aside half of his earnings to help pay the cost; they sold some of their meager possessions and borrowed twenty dollars to scrape together the last of the money. In 1988, they repeated the trip, after the same kind of struggle.
Latter-day Saints must go to the temple to understand the full blessings of the gospel, President Muñoz says: “That’s why we are looking forward so much to having a temple in Ecuador.”

Some years ago I went for the first time to the Salt Lake City Tabernacle for a general conference of the Church. I was awed by the size of the building, but even more by the inspiring presence of the General Authorities who were gathered there.
During my childhood, many of the Brethren had visited our small branch in Montana. We had no television, nor could we receive conference on the radio. So we looked forward to each General Authority visit as a special blessing. They had, it seemed to me, a power and faith above other men.
Then on that April day many years ago, I discovered one source of a General Authority’s strength.
I was attending conference with the six children of Elder Ezra Taft Benson, one of whom was my college roommate. My interest increased when President David O. McKay announced that the next speaker would be Elder Benson. I watched respectfully as Elder Benson, whom I had not yet met, walked toward the microphone. He was a big man, well over 1.8 meters tall. He was a man internationally known as the United States Secretary of Agriculture and a special witness of the Lord, a man who seemed calm and sure, one who had addressed audiences throughout the world. Suddenly a hand touched my arm. One of Elder Benson’s young daughters leaned toward me and whispered urgently, “Pray for dad.”
Somewhat startled, I thought, “This message is being passed down the row and I am to pass it on. Shall I say, ‘Pray for Elder Benson’? Shall I say, ‘You’re supposed to say a prayer for your father’? Sensing the immediate need to act, I leaned over and whispered simply, “Pray for dad.”
I watched that whisper move along the row to where Sister Benson sat, her head already bowed in prayer.

I was told recently of two missionary companions—one had many outward talents, the other didn’t. They had received a letter from a man and his family to whom they had taught several discussions. The letter told the elders to come by and pick up the Book of Mormon because the family had decided they were not interested in continuing the discussions.
The more outwardly talented elder felt confident that by using all his social skills and all his learning he would be able to change the man’s mind. During the meeting he used every persuasive skill he could think of. The other elder listened. Finally the man agreed to continue the discussions.
Later, at the family’s baptism, the talented elder remembered the night with some degree of pride. After the baptism the man told him, “The night I changed my mind and continued to have you teach me was the most important night of my life. As you talked to me, my mind was so determined to not listen that there was nothing you could have said that would have caused me to continue. But then I looked at your companion. His eyes were focused on me. I saw in his face more love than I had ever known before. My heart felt a spirit that made it so I could not resist his silent message. I decided then that if this church could cause someone to love like that, then I wanted to be part of it.”

Naheed drank her breakfast of lassi (a mixture of buttermilk and sugar cane juice), but she did not really want it. She was too excited either to eat or to drink, because today she would go to school for the first time in her life.
Naheed would be eleven years old soon, and as long as she could remember, she had wanted to go to school. But in her small village in Pakistan it was unusual for girls to go to school. Naheed loved to go into the post office to watch Ali Mujuber, the calligrapher, writing letters for the villagers who could not write for themselves. She also listened as he read the replies that came back to those who sent letters.
Ali Mujuber would first ask the person who wanted to send a letter, “To whom is it to go?” and “To what village or town?” Then he would take his bamboo pen, check its point carefully, dip it into the big ink bottle while listening carefully to what the person wanted to say in the letter, and start scratching words onto the paper.
Naheed would watch closely as Ali Mujuber formed the beautiful characters. She liked to hear the scratching sound of the pen. And she enjoyed sniffing the ink smell and hearing the drone of the villager’s voice. More than anything in the world, Naheed wanted to know the mystery of the writing and the reading of the squiggly shapes … and today she would begin.
“Very soon I can do what Ali Mujuber does,” she mused.
Her brother, Bashir, heard her. He smiled, for he had gone to school for a short time himself before Father needed him in the fields. “It is not so easy,” he warned. But he cheerfully helped his sister prepare her clay slate and bamboo writing stick.
Soon Naheed left her home carrying the slate and sharpened writing stick.
“Kuda Hafiz (may the Almighty save you),” Mother called as Naheed started down the path to the great spreading banyan tree in whose shade the pupils would learn from their teacher. The small village had no school building. School would only be held on dry days, for if it rained, the students would have to run home for shelter.
Naheed dawdled on the way home, wondering just how many days it would take sitting under the banyan tree for her to know all that Ali Mujuber knew. Her head was in a spin thinking of the many, many days to come. “Maybe I was foolish to think I could ever do such an important and difficult thing as reading and writing,” she murmured half aloud. Perhaps Mother needs me at home, she pondered. Perhaps school is a waste of the hours.
Mother sat beside the fire in the courtyard making chapati, the bread for the family’s evening meal. She greeted Naheed with a smile. “And how was school?” she asked.
Naheed shrugged and went into the family’s room to put up the slate and bamboo stick.
Mother looked anxious as Naheed came back to the courtyard. “How was school?” she asked again.
“Mother, I cannot do that which Ali Mujuber can do. I can never make even one of the figures that mean so much in the letters Ali Mujuber writes.”
Mother stopped her work and looked into her daughter’s eyes for many beats of the heart. At last she spoke quietly. “Naheed, my daughter,” she began, “many of the duties of a woman’s life are learned easily in a moment or in an hour or a day. When I was a girl like you, I was given only these kinds of tasks. The school was closed to girls. But you … you, my daughter, have the chance of learning words and their sweet secrets. But such precious secrets are not given easily … surely not in one day’s time.”
Naheed’s eyes fell. Mother was right. Naheed had made a big mistake in thinking she would learn everything on the first day of school. She left her mother and skipped to the center of the village. Her heart was light. “I can do it. I know I can do it,” she hummed to herself.
She watched the village boys line up for a game of pir kaudi (tag or tackle game, having a finish line). From where she stood she saw her mother moving gracefully with the big water jug on her head along with the other women of the village toward the well.
Suddenly she was filled with a feeling of hope and gratitude. She was going to school again tomorrow and for many tomorrows to come, but she was not going to go alone. She would take with her every day the young girl her mother once was. And Naheed would learn so much so well that she could teach her mother everything she (Naheed) learned. Everyone in the family would then have a person nearby to read and to write the precious words of the world.

“Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die” (D&C 42:45).
Her father died on a cold night in February, on his way home from a business trip to Florida. And now her mother was explaining what had happened. She spoke in a calm, measured voice. The commuter flight to Albany had crashed taking off from Kennedy. Megan knew already. It had been on the news. They said ice on the wings was probably the cause.
The northeaster had swept up the coast over the weekend, burying the fields deeply in the freshly fallen snow. Megan stared out the living room window. The cruelest month, their neighbor Mr. Chisholm called it. Actually, it was T. S. Eliot who said April was the cruelest month, but he spent most of his life in England, so what did he know. February in the hills of upstate New York had little kindness in it, nothing but the vindictive end of winter and no hope of spring.
Andrew started to cry. Susan looked confused and frightened. Megan abruptly got up and went to the mud room and put on her riding coat and boots. She didn’t want to hang around inside any longer.
Her father and Mr. Chisholm had been working on putting the horse-drawn sleigh back together. They’d been restoring it since October. She’d saddle up William and … and …
Her breath caught in her throat, her heart almost stopped, a feeling so incomprehensible she felt it could not be happening to her. The world shimmered, fragile as fine crystal caught at the perfect pitch. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and clenched her fists.
When she opened her eyes, the shimmering had stopped.
Outside, it looked like heaven. The sky was a piercing, frozen blue, the snow cover so brilliant white it made her squint and hold up her hands to shade her eyes. It hadn’t snowed like this in years. That’s what the people said who came to sympathize, to console. Nonstop the last two days. She would prefer they didn’t. It wasn’t their business. He wasn’t their father.
She swung open the stable doors. William the Conqueror greeted her with an annoyed nicker and a bang on the side of his stall. “Oh, c’mon, William,” she said, patting his withers. She put on a saddle and bridle.
The driveway was clear. Across the county road Mr. Chisholm was finishing his long driveway with the snowplow mounted on his tractor. He always did their driveway when he did his.
She trotted William up beside him. “Good morning, Mr. Chisholm!” she yelled over the hoarse rumble of the John Deere engine.
He doffed his cap to her, old habit. “G’morning, Megan.” But he hadn’t expected her this morning. He’d heard what happened.
Megan rode up to the porch and dismounted while Mr. Chisholm parked the tractor in the barn. His dog, Gabriel, pushed open the storm door with his muzzle and limped over to her. There had been a time when he could stand and put his forelegs on her shoulders. But, however willing the spirit, the body was in bad repair. She stroked him behind the ears. “Hi ya, Gabriel. Don’t like this cold, do you?”
Mr. Chisholm shook his head. “A husky, no less. That must sting the pride.” He massaged Gabriel’s coat. “Just like people, I guess. Old is old.”
“Oh, not Gabriel,” Megan said, holding his head in her hands and peering into his weary eyes. “He’ll live forever.”
“Nobody lives forever,” Mr. Chisholm said, with a gruffness he worried later had been too sharp. He added, “Not in this life, at least.”
But Megan didn’t appear to notice or mind.
When she got home Sister Garner and Sister McAllister had stopped by. She could tolerate them, not being the weepy, feeling-sorry-for-you kind. They had brought dinner. At this rate, her mother wouldn’t be cooking the rest of the month and a good part of the next.
While they talked in the kitchen with her mother, Megan sat in the living room, staring out the window, wondering that the world could be so perfect and so deadly at the same time.
Mr. Chisholm went with them to the funeral. That night, after she got into bed, Megan listened to her mother’s and her grandparents’ voices drifting up the staircase from the kitchen. They were talking about the thing they always waited to tell her later, if at all. But she wanted to know. They weren’t going to have to move—something about insurance and double indemnity, the settlement with the airline. As for the farm, Mr. Chisholm already rented half their fields and could probably take over the rest.
“I’m worried about Megan.”
Megan leaned forward, tilting her head toward the door.
Her mother went on, “She seems so … unemotional, so distant. She and her father were very close. It worries me, seeing her … seeing her going on as if nothing had happened.”
Megan couldn’t hear what her grandmother said, but it was probably something reassuring. Grandmother was a very reassuring person.
Megan lay back and curled up under the covers. I’m not unemotional, she told herself. It’s just that I believe what the Church teaches. I’ll be with my father again. There’s nothing to be sad about. But she felt a cold clenching in her chest as she sank into her bed. She stared at the ceiling in the darkness and faded off to sleep.
The funeral marked the end of what their life had been, and the beginning of a life they could not have dreamed of. It was a season of uncertainties, and March was an incalculable month. With February so short it didn’t always know that winter was over. March was far too long, but it needed all that time to figure itself out.
You could forgive March for being that way. But not April. It occurred to Megan, walking home from the bus stop on a gray Friday afternoon, that Mr. Eliot was right. It was a cruel month, one day bright and warm and full of promise, and the next day a frost would snap the growing buds like brittle bones. It couldn’t be trusted. You always had to be on your guard.
Coming around the bend she saw Mr. Chisholm’s John Deere stopped in the middle of the north field, and Mr. Chisholm trudging through the freshly turned loam, something bundled up in his arms. It was Gabriel, and for a horrifying moment she imagined that he had been caught under the spades of the plow.
She ran up the driveway, meeting Mr. Chisholm as he struggled up from the muddy lane. “What’s wrong?”
Mr. Chisholm shook his head. “Don’t know.” He laid Gabriel carefully on the porch. “Just seemed to run out of gas.”
Megan sat down beside the old husky. Gabriel turned his head towards her. There was grief and shame in his dark brown eyes.
Mr. Chisholm leaned against the railing, took off his cap, and wiped his brow. “I’ll give Dr. McAllister a call,” he said, a weariness in his voice Megan didn’t quite understand. He kicked the mud off his boots and disappeared into the house.
Saturday morning he took Gabriel to Charlton Corners to see Dr. McAllister. Megan watched from across the road, paced up and down the driveway, sat on the porch, rested her chin in her hands.
The big red Ford came around the bend, turned in at the driveway, and made the long, slow climb to the house. Mr. Chisholm turned off the engine. He sat in the cab, hands clutching the steering wheel. Finally, he opened the door and got out, standing, so when Megan ran up to him she could not see around him into the cab.
“How is he? How is Gabriel? Is he going to be all right?”
Mr. Chisholm looked down at her. His eyes were like Gabriel’s eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Megan …” he said. “Megan, he was old. He was in pain. It’s been going on for too long. There wasn’t any way to make him better.”
She stared at him.
“Megan …” he said again.
She twisted away, ran to the cab. Gabriel lay lifeless on a white canvas sheet. Mr. Chisholm pulled her away. She lashed out at him. There was a roaring in her ears that she realized was the sound of her own voice. Then she wrenched free and ran home across the fields.
She slammed the door, tripped over her brother’s galoshes in the mud room, and crashed to the floor. She kicked off her boots, viciously stubbing her toe. She could barely stand, and she clasped her arms tightly across her chest as if she might explode.
“Megan.” Her mother looked in from the kitchen. “Megan, what’s wrong?”
“Gabriel …” she gasped, blinking the tears out of her eyes.
“Gabriel?”
“He had him put to sleep,” she stated bluntly. She limped into the living room and collapsed on the couch. Her mother followed her, but Megan averted her gaze, and presently, she left. Megan curled up on the cushions, resting her head on the armrest. The knuckles of her right hand throbbed.
She hardly felt the pain. She was afraid. She knew she was afraid, afraid she could not hold the world together. A clear, aching tone rang through her temples. If the crystal shattered, she would never find all the pieces, never put it back together. If she could just be more careful, see these things coming, not hurt, not feel, have a heart of stone.
She whispered these things to herself, a quiet mantra of unemotionality. Through the window, across the road and fields, she watched Mr. Chisholm mark out a plot in the garden by the porch and begin to dig a grave.
She looked up at the ceiling, tasting bitterness and regret in her mouth. When she looked back her mother was standing next to Mr. Chisholm, and then she was walking away. The door opened and closed, and she heard her mother’s footsteps in the hall. She closed her eyes tightly. She did not want her mother to try to talk again.
Megan knew how unfair she was being. She ran to the mud room, flung on her jacket, and pulled on her boots and flew out of the house.
Gabriel lay on the white canvas sheet next to the grave. “He was a good dog,” Megan said, softly.
Mr. Chisholm turned to her. There was an angry red welt on his jaw, and she remembered how she had bruised her knuckles. “Aye, he was.” There were tears in his eyes, and she felt sorry for what she had done.
She knelt next to him and stroked Gabriel’s silver coat.
“There wasn’t anything Dr. McAllister could do. He didn’t suffer in the end.”
“I know.” She managed to smile reassuringly.
They sat together on the damp earth. Mr. Chisholm said, “We’d better get it done.”
She nodded, and then realized he meant her to help him. She grasped the corner straps of the tarp, he the other two. It was almost too heavy for her, especially with her right hand growing numb, but she braced herself, and they lowered him into the ground.
When she got home she told her mother, “We buried Gabriel.”
After she said her prayers that night, Megan told herself she had done right by Gabriel and Mr. Chisholm. She reminded herself that the past was past, her father was gone, it was all behind her, she would be fine. But it wasn’t true.
She told herself again. The words only disappeared into the air.
She told herself again, but a voice interrupted her, a voice she somehow recognized, a voice saying, “No, Megan.” A voice insistent, not reproachful. “Everything breaks, Megan. But everything mends, if you only give me the pieces.”
She did not remember awakening. She did not remember how she cried, sobbing so she could not breathe. But she remembered her mother’s arms around her, holding her, the universe of love enclosing them, her mother whispering it was okay to cry, to feel the hurt of her loss.
And then it was morning.
It was early, and she found her mother in the kitchen, at the stove. Together they stirred and tasted the tomato, pepper, and garlic that would go on the spaghetti for lunch after church. It was always better this way, when you cooked it up in the morning and let it sit for a few hours before warming it up again. Then her mother looked at her, touched her cheek. “We’re going to be all right, you know,” she said. “Your father loved you a great deal and always will.”
Megan knew, but at the same time she felt something missing from her life, a vacancy where there should be a presence, a hollow in her heart. And yet she would not deny it now, for it marked a sacred place in her memory and held the distant hope of heaven.
She walked outside into the cool, wet sunlight. Mr. Chisholm had just stepped out onto his porch. She cupped her hands and shouted, “Good morning, Mr. Chisholm!” and waved. Not the most reverent way to begin a Sunday morning, but she strongly suspected at that moment she might be happy, or at least capable of happiness. And it would not do to keep the moment only to herself.

Recently my husband and I had dinner with some friends. The conversation turned to religion, and one friend, a less-active member of the Church, began telling me why the Church was not true.
In the course of his explanation, he became adamant, hostile, and angry. The entire time I sat and listened. At first I felt like crying, but then I became angry and wanted to tell him off. The still, small voice, however, told me to be quiet.
Our friend didn’t finish his tirade until we had finished our dinner and paid the bill. Then he paused, as if waiting for my rebuttal. I sat there for a moment in silent prayer. Then, in a soft voice, I calmly said, “Do you know what I like best about going to church on Sunday? The sacrament. It allows me the opportunity to quietly bow my head and pray to Heavenly Father. I tell Him all the ways in which I could have done things differently during the past week, and I seek for ways to improve.”
Then I added, “I think of all the people I tried to be a blessing to during the past week, and I ask Heavenly Father to help me find more people to bless during the coming week. I am thankful that I have time during the sacrament each week to do this and to become the best I can be.”
Our friend looked at me and said nothing. We left the restaurant and walked to the car. I then asked him if he remembered all of the self-help books I had on my bookshelf at home. He did. I told him that since I had joined the Church, I had never read another self-help book. I said the only book I get my answers from anymore is the Book of Mormon.
A few days later he called to apologize.

The audience cheered as the large clock at the front of the stage neared the 22-hour mark. The teens in the Ottawa Ontario Stake youth choir were exhausted. After all, they had been singing for almost an entire day.
Finally, the clock read 22 hours and three minutes. The 53 young men and young women had just broken the world record for the longest concert performed by a choir.
Even though the record was officially broken, the youth didn’t stop singing. They had a hymn to finish. They filled the gym with the jubilant strains of the fourth verse of “The Spirit of God” (Hymns, no. 2).
The quest to break a world record began as an idea from Ben Lowater, a counselor in the Young Men presidency in the Riverside Ward. Brother Lowater gets the book Guinness World Records every year as a Christmas gift, and when he saw the entry for longest choir concert, he knew it was a record the Ottawa youth could break.
The youth were excited about his idea. Riley Jones, 17, says, “I always wanted to be a world-record holder. But before this activity, I could never figure out what record I could break.”
But in the end, the teens gained more from the activity than a spot in the record book. For their record-breaking concert, the youth sang all 341 Church hymns, and they even learned to sing some of their favorite hymns in parts. The choir began practicing for the concert two months in advance so they could learn the hymns they weren’t familiar with.
The youth were even given a CD so they could listen to all the unfamiliar hymns at home or in the car. Katarina de Savigny, 15, is a country music fan, but because of her experience with the choir, she has been switching her favorite country CDs for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Spring Pruner, 18, says she learned to love a lot of hymns that she hadn’t heard before. Of the new hymns she was introduced to, her favorite is “The Wintry Day, Descending to Its Close” (Hymns, no. 37). She says, “I sort of found hymns bland before, but as I got to learn them, I got to like them.”
Kenny Kyle, who plays the piano in priesthood meeting, says that learning all the songs in the hymnbook will help him on his mission. He also says the youth choir helped the youth in the Ottawa stake get to know each other better. “We grew a lot closer together because of this experience,” he says.
The Ottawa youth are different because of their experience with the stake choir. Some have cut down on the rock, country, or rap music they listen to. Many say they have a greater appreciation for the hymns of the Church, and several youth even joined their ward choirs.
What’s the reason for all of these changes? As chorister Rachelle Wride explains, “When you have taken part in a choir that sang hymns for 22 hours, you don’t look at the hymnbook the same way anymore.”

We sat in her living room—she in her nineties, I in my thirties. Her health and the snowy weather wouldn’t allow her to come to the bishop’s office for tithing settlement, so I had stopped by her home instead.
She handed me two pieces of paper. One was her own handwritten record of the contributions she had made to the Church during the year; the other was a computer printout listing the same information.
“As you can see,” she said, “my records perfectly match the ward clerk’s.” I couldn’t help thinking that if there had been a discrepancy, the error wouldn’t have been hers.
Then I asked the question bishops are supposed to ask in these situations: “Sister, is this a full tithing for the year?”
She looked at me with incredulity in her eyes. There was a brief pause. And then, with mock indignation, she chastised:
“Bishop, that’s the most ridiculous question I have ever heard!”
In her case, I couldn’t help but agree. We laughed together as I gave her a hug. I had known the answer before asking the question. But I also knew she was glad for the opportunity to give a verbal accounting of her faithfulness.

When 14-year-old Ken Welty of Centerville, Utah, learned that people in Africa needed food desperately, he decided to raise money for seeds to send to Africa.
First, Ken handed out fliers explaining what he was doing and which seeds needed to be purchased. After checking with seed companies about growing requirements, Ken assembled and sent seed packets for tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, corn, and other foods to contacts in Mali and Botswana.
The project was a real eye-opener for Ken. “My mom and dad have jobs, and they bring home the food for us to eat,” Ken explains. “It was weird to think that there are people over in Africa who are a lot older than me, but because of my service project I am helping them feed themselves.”