Gospel Story Finder

I lived in Nigeria, West Africa, for a few months. In our branch was a precious little child. She was seven years old and weighed only 10.5 kilograms. Often as I would enter our rented chapel, I would see her sitting on the back bench. I loved to pick her up and take her to the front with me and hold her during the meetings. It was as if she would soak up all the love that I had in me, and more.

Once at Christmas time I was holding my little friend, and it was announced that we would be singing “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” (Hymns, 95). A prompting came to me to sing it not to myself, as the words say, but to the little girl. It was a powerful, sweet, unforgettable experience for me, and I hope for her as well. As I sang my version of the text—He lives to bless you with his love, to plead for you above—I realized that the great blessings outlined in the hymn could come into the life of this little girl, and into the lives of others, through me. As an instrument in the Lord’s hands I could comfort others when they are faint, I could take time to hear their soul’s complaint, wipe away their tears, calm their troubled hearts, and love them to the end, just as the hymn tells us that the Savior does these things for us. But he needs my participation, he needs my willingness to serve, to be an instrument in his hands. He wants me to stop and help others. He wants all of us to stop and help those in need; to be good Samaritans.

Throughout my life I have had ample need for pruning. For example, a few years ago I expected to receive a company promotion. I felt I had the experience, skills, and longevity required, and I hoped the choice was obvious.

At that time there was a new top manager in our company who had different priorities and goals than I did. Among other things, he expected all senior managers to work weekends in addition to weekdays. I was a stake president then and knew that to best serve the members of my stake, I needed to spend a certain amount of time fulfilling my Church responsibilities.

When the hoped-for promotion never occurred, I had to struggle to keep myself from feeling bitter. What a disappointment! I determined just to keep going, to try to do things as well as I could, and to maintain a positive demeanor. Yet my sense of self-worth had been challenged. My abilities had been called into question. Other Church leaders I knew seemed to capably manage both demanding Church callings and time-consuming employment.

In a weak moment, I even wondered whether I had made the right choice to devote so much time to the Church. Then I decided I needed to focus on what was truly important. I began to look not only at my capabilities but also at my limitations. I could see that the time I was spending in Church service was necessary and that I probably wouldn’t have been able to manage both the employment position I had sought and my Church calling.

I think the Lord was telling me I had to choose and would have to keep choosing. To have chosen to devote extra time to my employment so I could get the promotion would have disengaged me from the Lord’s work. As I look back, I can see what a blessing it was for me to devote so much of my time to the Church. The ensuing years were some of the most rewarding of my life. I felt closer to the Lord. My testimony was strengthened. My relationship with fellow Saints in the area was a great blessing, and I am sure I became more fruitful than I would have been otherwise.

When I was a mission president in South Africa in 2005, I felt a very strong prompting by the Spirit to move our Norwegian missionary, Elder Joseph Henriksen, all the way across the mission—in between normal transfer dates—to replace a missionary who needed to have surgery. I had just interviewed Elder Henriksen in Queenstown, a two-hour flight plus a two-hour drive away from Cape Town, and on the flight home the Spirit kept telling me that he was the one who needed to move into the Strand Branch and replace the elder needing surgery.
As soon as we returned to the mission home, I called Elder Henriksen and asked him to pack his bags. . . . We picked him up [the next day] and talked to him about his new area, where they hadn’t had a baptism for 18 months. I explained to Elder Henriksen that he was the one the Lord had selected to be there and to make a difference in that branch. We introduced him to his new companion, who drove him another hour to Strand, a beautiful beach area on the Atlantic Ocean, about 50 miles south of Cape Town.
The first week in his new area, Elder Henriksen was thumbing through the area book and found a referral that hadn’t been contacted in the seaside town of Hermanus, another hour south of Strand, but in their assigned area. There was a small branch in Hermanus with about twenty active members, but he and his companion were the closest missionaries. Not wanting to waste time, but feeling prompted to contact the referral, he and his companion looked up the addresses of all the members in Hermanus so they could visit them as well as contacting the referral. Then they set aside a day to visit Hermanus.
When that day came, Elder Henriksen and his companion taught a first lesson in the home they were referred to, then began visiting the members. They knocked on the door of a member lady who expressed great surprise at seeing elders at her door. “I didn’t think we had missionaries in Hermanus anymore!” she exclaimed. Then she told them it was the greatest day of her life. She had just received in the mail a 300-year history of her ancestors. She was excited to be able to do temple work for hundreds of family members who had gone on before. Then she told them that her only problem was that she couldn’t understand any of it because it was written in Norwegian.
Elder Henriksen looked at her, smiled and said, “I’m Norwegian!” What a tender mercy for the Lord to inspire a mission president to suddenly transfer the only Norwegian missionary on the African continent to the area where this dear sister lived and needed a Norwegian translator. While he served there, he was able to visit her once a week and complete the translation. This experience strengthened the faith of everyone involved.

A few years ago I read a Reuters news service account of an Alaska Airlines nonstop flight from Anchorage to Seattle, carrying 150 passengers, which was diverted to a remote town on a mercy mission to rescue a badly injured boy. Two-year-old Elton Williams III had severed an artery in his arm when he fell on a piece of glass while playing near his home in Yakutat, 450 miles south of Anchorage. Medics at the scene asked the airline to evacuate the boy. As a result, the Anchorage-to-Seattle flight was diverted to Yakutat.
The medics said the boy was bleeding badly and probably would not live through the flight to Seattle, so the plane flew 200 miles to Juneau, the nearest city with a hospital. The flight then went on to Seattle, with the passengers arriving two hours late, most missing their connections. But none complained. In fact, they dug into their pocketbooks and took up a collection for the boy and his family.
Later, as the flight was about to land in Seattle, the passengers broke into a cheer when the pilot said he had received word by radio that Elton was going to be all right. Surely love of neighbor was in evidence.

I’m an 18-year-old girl living in Germany. Last year we had an American girl who stayed with us for some time, and she was a Mormon. I was impressed by that girl and the way she managed her life. Then she told me about the Mormons. Even though I had never heard about that religion, I immediately understood her. From that time on I have been very interested in Mormonism, and what I have found out about it is fantastic! I’m still not a member, but that is because of my mother. She doesn’t want me to join the Church. I thought about being just nothing—an atheist—but I soon found out that I became very superficial and that I needed something to believe in. I’m convinced that being a Mormon would be the best for me. I have received this fantastic magazine for half a year now as a gift from the American girl, and it has helped convince me. It’s the best magazine I have ever read. I want to thank you because it has helped me find my way and understand other people better. It has made me a better girl, a girl who thinks about life and faces problems and is not superficial. Since there are no Mormons in my town, my only information comes from you.
Tina StrickWeeze, Germany

I’ve been home from my mission for several years now, and looking back, it was a struggle for a good year. My family moved out of state, my long-term relationship ended, and all my friends seemed to be married and starting their eternal families—all of which contributed to a difficult time of transition for me. When I expressed that I wanted to make chicken and waffles (a Southern classic where I served), that I still wanted to study my scriptures early in the morning, that I wanted to share a pass-along card with the gas station employee, people told me I was awkward. “All returned missionaries are awkward at first,” they’d say. “But don’t worry. In a few months, you’ll be normal again.”
This was when I realized the great divide of normalcy between missionary life and regular life. For me, it was hard to hear that my life, my desires—the way I’d been changed by Jesus Christ and His Atonement and dedicated my heart to God over the last 18 months of my life—were considered awkward, that they weren’t “normal.”
I’ve witnessed this dangerous mindset in many returned missionaries. In a desperate effort to feel accepted upon returning home, missionaries might quickly abandon the very habits that would’ve helped their transition. Thankfully, several wonderful, wise people gave me the one piece of advice that helped me during this time of transition more than anything else: with the help of Jesus Christ and His Atonement, you have to find your new normal.

During my first semester of law school, my contracts class was taught by a distinguished professor who was very kind and gracious—when he was not in the classroom. In class, he was a master at teaching using the Socratic method—a method of teaching that involves asking probing questions in a way intended to develop critical thinking.
For most class periods we were assigned to read three legal decisions or cases. During class, a student was called upon to summarize the facts of the case and then describe the legal principles of contract law that the cases established. The unfortunate student was then subject to the professor’s probing, twisting questions that followed. This was almost always a humbling experience.
The first time I was called upon, the cases dealt with a principle of contract law known as unilateral acceptance. As a result, I have never forgotten that principle.

“The greatest hardship I passed through on our journey was the day before we got to Laramie. The cattle were tired and footsore and the traveling was very hard so Father told us that morning we must all walk. No riding that day. I shall never forget that memorable walk, sand ankle deep to men and women and much deeper to the cattle and wagons. When we camped that night, we had traveled ten miles. I thought it was a thousand and wished many times that day that I was where people didn’t get tired.”
“At last, we came to the end of our long, tedious journey, and on the evening of October 15 we camped at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. Oh, what a glorious sight to look down into the valley of the Great Salt Lake! The next morning we were up bright and early, and soon drove down.”

Just right, Andi thought as she quickly looked in the mirror. She was wearing her favorite red dress. She always wanted to look her best on Sundays. She ran down to breakfast.
Andi was just finishing her last piece of toast when the Reeders’ car horn honked from the driveway. “Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad!” Andi said, kissing them as she ran out the door.
Even though Mom and Dad weren’t members of the Church, they encouraged Andi to go to church each week. The Reeder family had given her a ride almost every Sunday since she was baptized and confirmed. Andi liked how they always made her feel so welcome and loved.
After sacrament meeting it was time for Primary. Andi loved being in Brother and Sister Long’s class. They were kind, and their lessons were always the best.
“Today we’re going to talk about temples,” Sister Long said. “What are some things we know about temples?”
Andi knew one answer: “We can do temple baptisms.” She was excited about that because in a few years, she would be able to go to the temple to do baptisms.
“Great, Andi. What else do we know?”
“You can be married in the temple,” said Andi’s friend Allison.
“Very good,” said Sister Long. “Anything else?”
“Families can be together forever when they’re sealed in the temple,” Allison added.
But not my family, thought Andi. Mom and Dad haven’t been sealed in the temple! Suddenly her face felt hot, and her eyes began to sting with tears.
“Are you OK, Andi?” asked Sister Long.
“Yes,” Andi said, trying to hold back the tears. But she could feel her heart pounding all through the rest of the lesson.
When class was over, Sister Long sat by Andi and put an arm around her. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I won’t be with my mom and dad forever,” Andi said. “They haven’t been married in the temple. Who will I belong to after I die? Does Heavenly Father still love me even if my parents aren’t members?”
Sister Long looked straight into Andi’s eyes. “No matter who you are and no matter if your family has been to the temple or not, you are still part of Heavenly Father’s family. You can stay close to Him and be an example to others. He will always love, guide, and protect you, no matter what. He wants to bless you and your family. You are a child of God, Andi.”
Just then Andi’s heart seemed to skip a beat, and the pounding stopped. Now a warm feeling filled her heart instead. She knew what her teacher had said was true.

George hurried through the woods, munching absentmindedly on a corn dodger stuffed with strips of home-cured meat. He glanced about at the bright ferns and wild flowers poking up through the forest floor as he went, but his thoughts were not on them. Ordinarily he would have stopped now and then to study a beetle crawling over a stem or to wonder why certain tiny flowers flourished in shade while others wilted without sunshine, but not today. He had someplace special to go on this Indian summer day in 1871.
George was heading toward the school in Diamond Grove, Missouri, about a mile away from where he lived with Aunt Susan and Uncle Moses. They were the white folks who had taken him in after he was orphaned. George recalled Aunt Sue talking to the neighbors about their children’s schooling, and now he was going to find out what it was all about. Though he was ten years old he had never been in a school.
George was slight for his age, and his voice was permanently damaged as the result of a babyhood illness that never quite left him. But he made up for it with his sharp, hungry mind. He wondered about everything he saw, even small things that everyone else ignored. Perhaps the boy felt that their small size, like his own, didn’t make them unimportant.
When George reached a clearing and spotted the small, dingy cabin that was used for a schoolhouse, he paused a moment. It doesn’t look like much, he thought. Then he crept quietly to the doorstep of the little building and crouched there, listening.
What George heard made his heart thump—the droning of children’s voices, interrupted now and then by the sharp voice of the teacher. The students were reading and reciting their lessons!
George sat spellbound for several more minutes; then he stole away as silently as he had come.
I want to read! George thought to himself as he slipped quietly back through the woods. Suddenly, he flopped down in the spongy moss under an oak tree and pondered a while longer. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
Back at the farm, George hurried to find Uncle Moses. The hardworking farmer was in the barn, currying one of his fine horses.
“Uncle Moses!” chirped George shrilly.
Moses Carver whirled around to face the barefooted boy.
“You startled me, boy!” he exclaimed. Then he said, “What is it?”
“Uncle M-Moses,” piped George like a little bird. Then he remembered to speak slowly so that he wouldn’t stammer so much. “When can I go to s-school, Uncle Moses? I’m big enough now! C-can I go tomorrow?”
Moses turned away for a moment, rubbing his stubbly chin. “George,” he began, “that school in Diamond Grove …” He paused painfully. “It’s for white children. You can’t go there, son.”
George stared, the shining hope in his eyes dimmed. He wanted so much to learn! He stumbled out of the barn into the bright sunlight. The bloodhounds that Uncle Moses raised for hunting yelped and bayed, but he didn’t hear them. Aunt Sue spied him from the house and called, “George! Could you help me with the jelly this afternoon?” George kept on walking. “George?” she called again.
George broke into a run. He needed to be alone—in his secret garden in the woods. This was a place where he kept many kinds of plants and flowers. He tended them carefully, seeing to their special needs. If a plant wilted in the pure, rich loam of the forest floor, he mixed in sand. If a rosebush were ailing, he tracked down the tiny insects that were nibbling its leaves and made it well. Even the neighbors had taken to calling him the plant doctor, and they brought him their plants and flowers to mend. He hardly ever lost a patient.
“That George has a way with wild things,” they’d say to one another.
Today George scarcely noticed his garden. He just sat silently, hardly aware of the woodsy sounds of twittering birds and scampering squirrels.
There in the quiet of the woods, George tried to sort things out in his mind. There were so many things he did not know, and he wanted to learn everything! I will learn to read and write! he decided. Perhaps Aunt Sue and Uncle Moses will help. There must be some reason why I’m darker than other folks. Up to now it hasn’t made any difference. But if I have to work extra hard for what I want, then that’s what I’ll do.
George started for home, skipping pebbles as he went. That very evening, he and Aunt Sue sat down and looked over an old blue-back speller she had used as a girl. By the light of a tallow dip they practiced words and letters from the book. Then Uncle Moses helped George do simple sums and write his name.
George learned quickly. The neighbors heard about his thirst for knowledge and loaned him books to read.
Uncle Moses nodded knowingly. “That boy’s going to make something of himself,” he told Aunt Sue.
George did indeed make something of himself. He went to school, although he had to leave the home of his family to do it. He wandered the country throughout the West and South, taking jobs wherever a school was located nearby. He finally managed to attend college in Iowa. After graduation and work at the agricultural experiment station there, he was asked by Booker T. Washington to teach at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The folks back home and the friends he had made everywhere he went were very proud of him.
George never stopped learning. He lived to be more than eighty years old and became known throughout the world as Dr. George Washington Carver, distinguished professor, scientist, artist, musician, and inventor. As a chemurgist (one who uses farm products for industrial purposes) he devised more than 300 different uses for peanuts, 118 for sweet potatoes, and 75 for pecans. Perhaps more importantly, he spent a lifetime working to help his people—all people, regardless of race or religious faith.
Although many had been unkind to him along the way, there always seemed to be at least one friendly face encouraging George to go on. He wanted to be that friendly face to as many others as possible. He got his wish. He was an inspiration to thousands in his own country—and to the whole world.

Sisters, we must prepare if we wish to serve, and we must serve if we wish to prepare. When I was 16 I was called to teach the three-year-olds in what was then called Junior Sunday School. (You know there was such a thing in the olden days.) I taught some busy children. They climbed on and under the chairs and table and never seemed to stop moving. I was dreadfully inexperienced, and during the first few weeks I wondered if I had done the right thing in accepting the call.
But I persisted, and what I learned—quickly—was that I couldn’t just pray for help. I had to be prepared. That meant planning activities, stories, and lessons, and it meant having plan B ready, along with C through Z. Many years later, when I was called to lead a Junior Sunday School, I knew how to assist new teachers. I knew how to enjoy the children, and I knew the importance of being faithful in my calling.

Embarking on my education with BYU-Pathway Worldwide presented daunting challenges—power outages and unreliable internet connectivity which threatened to derail my academic pursuits, threatening my ability to complete the one-year PathwayConnect program. Despite my fears, I persevered, relying on prayer and faith. Miraculously, I witnessed divine intervention, which bolstered my confidence as an online student. A job opportunity, facilitated by a friend, provided the means to provide backup electricity and secure reliable Wi-Fi. It felt like a miracle! With these basic necessities restored, I felt a renewed sense of hope and determination to pursue my educational goals. However, my journey was far from smooth sailing.
Upon graduation from PathwayConnect, acceptance into BYU-Idaho’s online bachelor’s program brought renewed concerns. The unexpected loss of my job caused some financial hardship, which left me with no means to afford tuition and essential course materials. Depleted savings increased my worries, yet I knew that quitting school was not an option. As President Dieter. F. Uchtdorf once said, “For members of the Church, education is not merely a good idea—it’s a commandment”.
Amidst fervent prayers and contemplation, I saw a post on LinkedIn by Matt Richards, who works at BYU-Pathway. He talked about the Hall Foundation Scholarship. It was like an answer to my prayers! This scholarship helped me pay for school and books, so I could keep studying. Its promise of financial support was a lifeline in my time of need. Securing the scholarship eased the burden of tuition and expenses, allowing me to focus on my academic pursuits. Even when things seemed tough, I learned to trust that help would come when I needed it most. With faith and help from above, I’m about to graduate. It’s been a journey full of ups and downs, but I know I’m not alone. There are miracles all around us, if we just keep believing.

As a child, I became less-active in the Church, but as a teenager I was considering coming back. Before making this important decision, I prayed and pondered what it would mean to come back to the Church and the responsibilities it would entail.
That is when I decided to read some old issues of the Liahona. I was reading to find stories that would encourage me and reinforce my desire to return to church.
Through reading articles about people who had experiences similar to mine, I received a lot of encouragement. Most of all, the articles helped me understand that nobody at church is perfect and that I have my faults as well and need to do something to correct them.
I have now come back to church. I realize that the meetings are like they were before, but now I have a more positive vision, partly due to ideas that I found in the Liahona about how to enjoy classes and sacrament meeting.
Every time I read the Liahona, I feel satisfied as I find answers to my questions.María Pilar Santana, Dominican Republic

Several months ago, Sister Osborn and I were traveling a narrow road in central Luzon in the Philippines, where I was serving as a full-time Regional Representative. We passed a farmer on his way to market. He was trotting along, carrying an enormous load of vegetables and produce hanging from both ends of a wooden yoke carried across his shoulders. I stopped the car to take his picture. After I snapped the camera, he lowered his burden in order to visit. I asked my friend if his load wasn’t really too heavy to carry a great distance. He replied, “No, it isn’t, because it’s balanced.”
“Doesn’t that yoke hurt?” I asked.
“At first it did, but I carved and sanded it with a rough stone, and now it fits and is comfortable.”
I noticed, also, that he had a small cloth pad that spanned his neck—I suppose to cushion the shocks of a rough road.
It wasn’t until we drove away that I thought of the Savior’s invitation found in Matthew 11:
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28–30.)

It was a very chilly night. The railroad station, what there was left of it, was very cold. Starving children were sleeping in the corners. That was a common sight in Japan in those days. The fortunate ones had a newspaper or a few old rags to fend off the cold.
On that train, I slept restlessly. The berths were too short anyway. In the bleak, chilly hours of the dawn, the train stopped at a station along the way. I heard a tapping on the window and raised the blind. There on the platform stood a little boy tapping on the window with a tin can. I knew he was an orphan and a beggar; the tin can was the symbol of their suffering. Sometimes they carried a spoon as well, as if to say, “I am hungry; feed me.”
He might have been six or seven years old. His little body was thin with starvation. He had on a thin, ragged shirt-like kimono, nothing else. His head was shingled with scabs. His one jaw was swollen—perhaps from an abscessed tooth. Around his head he had tied a filthy rag with a knot on top of his head—a pathetic gesture of treatment.
When I saw him and he saw that I was awake, he waved his can. He was begging. In pity, I thought, “How can I help him?” Then I remembered. I had money, Japanese money. I quickly groped for my clothing and found some yen notes in my pocket. I tried to open the window. But it was stuck. I slipped on my trousers and hurried to the end of the car. He stood outside expectantly. As I pushed at the resistant door, the train pulled away from the station. Through the dirty windows I could see him, holding that rusty tin can, with the dirty rag around his swollen jaw.
There I stood, an officer from a conquering army, heading home to a family and a future. There I stood, half-dressed, clutching some money which he had seen but which I could not get to him. I wanted to help him, but couldn’t. The only comfort I draw is that I did want to help him.
That was thirty-eight years ago, but I can see him as clearly as if it were yesterday.
Perhaps I was scarred by that experience. If so, it is a battle scar, a worthy one, for which I bear no shame. It reminds me of my duty!

Marvin J. Ashton was born on May 6, 1915, in Salt Lake City to Marvin O. and Rachel Grace Jeremy Ashton. His parents taught him the value of hard work. He raised rabbits and pigeons and worked on a two-acre produce farm raising and selling fruits and vegetables. His ward didn’t have a Scout troop, so he and four friends rode their horses to a neighboring ward and participated in its Scout program, advancing to the rank of Eagle. While in high school, he helped in his father’s hardware store. He continued to work while he attended the University of Utah, where he graduated with a degree in business administration.

When Eddie hurried into his classroom that Tuesday morning, he bumped into something just inside the door and started to fall. His classmates laughed. Eddie was used to that. He liked the attention, even when Miss Enns got cross.
He tried to catch himself by grabbing onto the object he had tripped over, but it moved away as if it had wheels.
It did!
It was an empty wheelchair. Why was it here? He tried to ask Miss Enns, but she was writing the day’s study plan on the board.
As the tardy bell rang, Miss Enns faced the class. “You’re not in your seat yet?” she said as Eddie darted down the aisle, hopping over Joe’s outstretched foot and ducking Mike’s fist.
“What’s that for?” Eddie said, but Miss Enns ignored the question and took roll.
She didn’t say one word about the chair before the arithmetic quiz or while she wrote the week’s spelling words on the board. By then, nobody could think about anything but the wheelchair.
Finally Miss Enns pushed the chair in front of the class. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
They all did.
“My cousin brought it from the hospital. Today we’ll experiment with a different way of moving. Who’s first?”
Eddie’s hand shot up. He always wanted to be first. He got more attention and laughs that way. If nobody knew how to do something, he could make really funny mistakes.
“Rebecca, how about you?”
Rebecca hurried to the chair, her curls bouncing. Miss Enns helped her fasten the seat belt. Rebecca tried to return to her desk, but the chair wouldn’t go straight. She bumped into Nancy’s desk and got caught on the edge of Joe’s. “I don’t like this,” she said, and she unhooked the belt. “The steering’s too hard.”
“Eddie?” Miss Enns said.
Eddie was into the chair within a moment. This was great!
“You seem to like the wheelchair, Eddie. Do you think you can stay in it all day?”
“Sure!” Eddie said with a grin. Just then the recess bell rang.
But maneuvering the wheelchair wasn’t as much fun as Eddie had thought it would be. For the first time ever, he was the last one out of the room at recess. Everybody got in his way, and wheeling was slow. When he approached the boys’ room, the door slammed shut as Nick left. Eddie swung the chair next to the door and waited for someone else to leave. Nobody did. As he tried to open the door, he banged his toes hard. Finally he wheeled himself alongside the door and slipped inside as he tugged it wide. That was much harder than he had thought it would be, because the wheels kept catching on either the door or the door frame. Finally he made it.
Inside, he faced another problem. Miss Enns had dared him to stay in the wheelchair all day, but—well—for certain things, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to go ask her exactly what to do. He knew he should play fair, though, so he wheeled himself as close as possible before he unhooked the belt.
Washing his hands was awkward, too, and leaving the rest room was almost as hard as coming in, except that he could push against the door with the chair. Even so, he still banged his toes again.
Next, at the water fountain, he discovered that he wasn’t up high enough to get a drink from the chair.
As he wheeled himself down the hall, he saw that the outer door stood open. It was a beautiful day. But a low metal ridge ran across the bottom of the doorway, and it was hard to get the wheelchair across. By the time he did, Eddie’s hands were red and sore. Outside, there was a large cement landing with one step down to the playground. Eddie knew that if he gave himself a push off the step, the chair might tip over and he could really hurt himself.
On the playground, his classmates tossed the basketball back and forth. “Hey, guys,” he yelled, “over here! Help me down. I want a turn.” Nobody paid attention. And when recess ended, everybody else pushed by him as if he wasn’t there. By the time he wheeled himself back to class, he was very tired. He felt grumpy.
Miss Enns was threading film for a movie. “Please take notes on this film, class,” she said.
Eddie couldn’t reach his desk to write anything. He had to sit at an angle because there wasn’t room for the wheelchair behind his desk. He could hardly see the screen, and his hands were throbbing.
At lunchtime, Miss Enns brought Eddie a tray and set it on the end of the nearest table. Eddie had to sit there, away from his friends. “They act like I’m not here,” he muttered angrily.
Miss Enns put her hand on his shoulder understandingly. “That’s often the way it is for people who are different.”
“But I’m not different. I’m still me.”
She nodded sympathetically, then took her own tray to join the other teachers.
After lunch Eddie didn’t even try going outside. It was a long lunchtime alone in the cafeteria.
The afternoon seemed endless. By now, Eddie’s arms and shoulders ached from wheeling himself everywhere. He broke the lead in his pencil twice and had to stretch his very tallest to reach the pencil sharpener. When an ambulance went by, he was the only person who couldn’t see it, and he stayed in alone for the afternoon recess. He wanted to go to the bathroom again but was too sore to wheel himself that far and struggle with the door again. Nobody had laughed at him once. They’d only acted as if he wasn’t quite there.
When it was time for social studies, Miss Enns didn’t have them open their books. Instead, she asked, “I want to know what Eddie has learned from being in that wheelchair today.”
“I hate it!” Eddie blurted. “Nobody pays attention to me. It’s work, moving and steering. My arms ache. I have blisters on my hands. And it’s terrible going to the bathroom, ’cause the door opens the wrong way!”
Somebody giggled, but Eddie didn’t look up to see who. “I couldn’t even think of one silly thing to do to make people laugh. I never want to be in a wheelchair again.”
“You’ve been a really good sport, Eddie,” Miss Enns said. Speaking to the whole class, she announced, “We’ll have this chair all week. Everyone will have a turn to spend an hour or so in the wheelchair, and I hope that you will all stay in it long enough to understand at least a little of what Eddie went through today.”
“Why are we doing this?” Eddie asked, standing up to give relief to his muscles.
“Next week we’ll have a new student. Ron’s been in the hospital almost a year, but he can return to school now.”
“And he’s in a wheelchair,” Eddie guessed.
“Right. He may not ever walk again, and I want you all to understand at least a little of what that’s like for him.”
“He needs help with the bathroom doors,” Eddie said, remembering his own struggle. “If you put him next to me, I can help with that stuff, because I know about it.”
Miss Enns smiled. “I thought that I could count on you,” she said as the bell rang, and Eddie knew that today he’d learned an important lesson.

A few years ago, as a birthday gift, I went to the FamilySearch® system and retrieved my wife’s entire recorded family pedigree. That was a serious mistake. The computer revealed that my wife is a descendant of European royalty. It has been hard to live with her ever since. Maybe now, through this knowledge of her family history, I am more inclined to treat her as our family queen. But the biggest problem, of course, is that my children share in this royal ancestry, which, sadly, makes me the only “commoner” in my family.

Some of you who are familiar with Oxford University may know that it’s the world’s oldest university. The building that I lived in as a student was built in 1410—beautiful to look at, uncomfortable to live in. When I arrived at Oxford, I realized it was going to be difficult to be an active member of the Church. The Rhodes Scholarship Trust, which had given me my scholarship, had a lot of activities for the recipients of the scholarship.
As I looked at the extent to which I wanted to be involved in church, I realized that I didn’t know the Book of Mormon was true. I had read it several times but usually as an assignment—from my parents or a Brigham Young University instructor. But this time I desperately needed to know if the Book of Mormon was true. So I decided that I would commit every evening from 11:00 to 12:00 to reading the Book of Mormon to find out if it was true.
I wondered if I dared spend that much time because I was in a very demanding academic program, studying applied econometrics. I was going to try to finish the program in two years, whereas most people in the program finished it in three. I didn’t know if I could afford allocating an hour a day to this effort.
But nonetheless I did. I began at 11:00 by kneeling in prayer near a little heater in the stone wall, and I prayed out loud. I told God how desperate I was to find out if the Book of Mormon was true. I told Him that if He would reveal to me that it was true, I then intended to dedicate my life to building His kingdom. I told Him that if it wasn’t true, I needed to know that for certain too because then I would dedicate my life to finding out what was true.
I read the first page of the Book of Mormon. When I got down to the bottom of the page, I stopped. I thought about what I had read on that page, and I asked myself, “Could this have been written by a charlatan who was trying to deceive people, or was this really written by a prophet of God? And what did it mean for me in my life?” Then I put the book down and knelt in prayer and asked God again, “Please tell me if this is a true book.” Then I sat in the chair, picked up the book, turned the page, read it, paused at the bottom, and did the same thing. I did this for an hour every night, night after night, in that cold, damp room at Oxford.
One evening, by the time I got to the chapters at the end of 2 Nephi, I said my prayer, sat in my chair, and opened the book. All of a sudden there came into that room a beautiful, warm, loving Spirit that surrounded me and permeated my soul, enveloping me in a feeling of love that I had not imagined I could feel. I began to cry. As I looked through my tears at the words in the Book of Mormon, I could see truth in those words that I never imagined I could comprehend before. I could see the glories of eternity, and I could see what God had in store for me as one of His sons. That Spirit stayed with me the whole hour and every other evening as I prayed and read the Book of Mormon in my room. That same Spirit would always return, and it changed my heart and my life forever.
I look back at the conflict I had experienced, wondering whether I could afford to spend an hour every day apart from the study of applied econometrics to find out if the Book of Mormon was true. I use applied econometrics maybe once a year, but I use my knowledge that the Book of Mormon is the word of God many times every day of my life. Of all the education I have ever pursued, that is the single most useful piece of knowledge I ever gained.

The first real test of my young testimony came when I had to decide between going on a mission and playing basketball,” says Dean Reid Burgess. Brother Burgess had spent his freshman year playing basketball for the College of Southern Utah on scholarship.
It was 1965, the height of the war in Vietnam, and not every young man had the chance to serve a mission because of the United States military draft. But Brother Burgess had the chance and the choice. “It took a lot of prayer and a lot of fasting,” he says. “But I knew serving a mission was a real privilege, so I left school to serve.” While serving in the Brazilian Mission, Brother Burgess solidified his testimony of the restored gospel.