Gospel Story Finder

It is instructive that the second Latter-day Saint connection with the Titanic did not have a happy mortal ending. Irene Corbett was 30 years old. She was a young wife and mother from Provo, Utah. She had significant talents as an artist and musician; she was also a teacher and a nurse. At the urging of medical professionals in Provo, she attended a six-month course of study on midwife skills in London. It was her great desire to make a difference in the world. She was careful, thoughtful, prayerful, and valiant. One of the reasons she chose the Titanic to return to the United States was because she thought the missionaries would be traveling with her and that this would provide additional safety. Irene was one of the few women who did not survive this terrible tragedy. Most of the women and children were placed in the lifeboats and were ultimately rescued. There were not enough lifeboats for everyone. But it is believed that she did not get in the lifeboats because, with her special training, she was attending to the needs of the numerous passengers who were injured from the iceberg collision.

The lost opportunity might relate to family, occupation, talents, experiences, or others. All of these were cut short in the case of Sister Corbett. There were songs she did not sing and potential she did not fulfill in this mortal life. But when we look through the wide and clear lens of the gospel instead of the limited lens of mere mortal existence, we know of the great eternal reward promised by a loving Father in His plan. As the Apostle Paul taught, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” A line from a beloved hymn provides comfort, solace, and the clear lens: “And Jesus listening can hear the songs I cannot sing.”

Learning not to judge was one of the most important lessons I learned in seminary. I saw people in every class who were there because they didn’t want to take a “real” class at school, and seminary was a great opportunity to catch up on some zzz’s. But then a guy would stand up and bear his testimony, and it would be the most beautiful thing. Never in a million years would I have expected some of these people to even know what the scriptures were, and they would stand up and tell you how true they are and how much they loved them and the Church. It was amazing.

“One day I sat guarding our lemonade stand while Marilyn went for more ice chips. The streetcar would be along soon, and we almost always got some customers at this stop if there were ice chips in clean tin cups for the drinks. I passed the time watching the gardener. He looked so hot, even from where I sat, and he moved like he hurt more than usual. Oh, I felt so sorry for him! Then I had a great idea. I’d treat him to some of our lemonade—free. It wasn’t very cold but it was wet, and he’d know somebody cared about him. For safekeeping, I pocketed the pennies we’d taken in. Then I crossed the street with the cup of lemonade.
“‘Well, thank you,’ he said, sipping it carefully. ‘You’ve added just enough sugar.’
“Some people downed their drinks in one gulp, so of course they couldn’t tell if our mix was good or not. The gardener tasted it. He knew. Just as he knew which plants had the softest leaves and that my eyes were brown and not blue. He finished drinking and said that since I had done him such a favor, he was going to do one for me; he was going to show me a kind of miracle. We walked over to the colorful bed of coleus plants, all dark red and green trimmed and velvety. He troweled one up and put it into my hands after interlocking my fingers so the soil wouldn’t spill off the roots. I was to pot it, water it just so, and place it in a sunny window where I could watch ‘the miracle.’
“He took one ruffled leaf gently and, lifting it with his knobby fingers, said, ‘The coleus plant will lean to the light. Turn your plant every two or three days and the leaves will turn right around again and lean to the light. Try it, Elaine. You’ll see the miracle. And maybe it’s something you’d like to do with your life.’
“No wonder we held him and his handiwork in a kind of reverence!”

Illustrations by Mina Price
When Ian woke up, he heard his mother singing. It was “I Feel My Savior’s Love.” That was Ian’s favorite Primary song. He started singing along with her.
“You’re awake!” she said. She was smiling and had tears in her eyes. Ian saw his dad sitting next to her. He looked happy too.
“I’ve been singing your favorite songs to you every day,” Mom said.
Ian smiled back—but his head hurt. Actually, his whole body hurt, especially his leg.
He slowly looked around. He wasn’t at home. He was lying on a metal bed in a strange room. Then he saw a nurse and lots of other beds nearby. This must be a hospital, he thought.
“What happened to me?” he asked.
Mom’s face turned sad. “You were in a bad accident. A metal gate fell on you. You’ve been in the hospital for two weeks, but you are going to be OK.”
Two weeks! Wow, that’s a long time to be asleep, Ian thought. The last thing he could remember was being at the church building, practicing for the Primary program …
Oh no! The program!
“Did I miss the Primary program?” Ian asked. He had been looking forward to it for so long! He loved singing with his friends.
Mom smiled and shook her head. “No, you didn’t miss it. The ward decided to postpone it until you woke up so you could be part of it.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Dad said. “All the Primary kids asked the bishop to wait. They wanted you to be there. They knew how excited you were for it.”
Ian was happy he could still be in the Primary program. But he had to get better first. And that took a long time. He had to stay in the hospital for a while longer. When he finally got to come home, he still couldn’t walk or play.
But his friends got to come visit him. Ian would ask them about school and church. And they would ask him when he was coming back.
“Not until my leg is better,” he would tell them. “I still can’t walk.”
October turned into November, and Ian slowly got better. One day his friends invited him to come over and watch a movie with them. Ian’s mom and dad helped get him there.
“Does your leg still hurt?” his friend Chaís asked him.
“Yes,” Ian said. “But it’s getting better little by little.”
“Can you walk yet?” Chaís asked.
“I haven’t tried today,” Ian said.
“Here, let’s try right now,” Chaís said. She helped him stand up. Carefully, Ian put his foot down. He moved his body forward. He was still standing! It was his first step in over a month! Everyone clapped.
“Maybe this means you can come back to church soon!” Chaís said.
She was right. In a few more weeks, Ian’s leg finally stopped hurting. The doctors took the cast off his leg and put on a brace instead. When Sunday came, it was time for the Primary program.
During sacrament meeting, Ian walked to the front of the chapel with his friends. He stood up straight and smiled at his mom and dad. He sang the songs as loud as he could. When it was his turn, he stood at the microphone and shared his testimony. He was grateful for his Primary friends. And he was glad he could be part of the Primary program after all.
Ian lives in the Dominican Republic. Go to pages 12–13 to learn about this country and see a picture of Ian!

I recently was made aware of a touching example of loving kindness—one that had unforeseen results. The year was 1933, when because of the Great Depression, employment opportunities were scarce. The location was the eastern part of the United States. Arlene Biesecker had just graduated from high school. After a lengthy search for employment, she was finally able to obtain work at a clothing mill as a seamstress. The mill workers were paid only for each of the correctly completed pieces they sewed together daily. The more pieces they produced, the more they were paid.

One day shortly after starting at the mill, Arlene was faced with a procedure that had her confused and frustrated. She sat at her sewing machine trying to unpick her unsuccessful attempt to complete the piece on which she was working. There seemed to be no one to help her, for all of the other seamstresses were hurrying to complete as many pieces as they could. Arlene felt helpless and hopeless. Quietly, she began to cry.

Across from Arlene sat Bernice Rock. She was older and more experienced as a seamstress. Observing Arlene’s distress, Bernice left her own work and went to Arlene’s side, kindly giving her instruction and help. She stayed until Arlene gained confidence and was able to successfully complete the piece. Bernice then went back to her own machine, having missed the opportunity to complete as many pieces as she could have, had she not helped.

With this one act of loving kindness, Bernice and Arlene became lifelong friends. Each eventually married and had children. Sometime in the 1950s, Bernice, who was a member of the Church, gave Arlene and her family a copy of the Book of Mormon. In 1960, Arlene and her husband and children were baptized members of the Church. Later they were sealed in a holy temple of God.

As a result of the compassion shown by Bernice as she went out of her way to help one whom she didn’t know but who was in distress and needed assistance, countless individuals, both living and dead, now enjoy the saving ordinances of the gospel.

When I was in Primary, my brother was a toddler, and my sister was a baby. My mother was very busy taking care of them during the day, so when I came home from school, I helped her. I put my brother in the stroller and walked around the block with him, again and again. We talked about the beautiful world together and looked at the birds, bugs, and our neighbors’ pets. It was a small thing, but it made a big difference! It helped my mom feel happy and rested. It helped my whole family. It was a way of helping like Jesus wants us to help.

I think of Elder Neal A. Maxwell and some of the challenges he faced during his teenage years. His parents were very poor. It was embarrassing to him that early on they did not have indoor bathroom facilities like so many of his friends. He raised pigs, and that didn’t gain him a lot of popularity at high school either. He suffered from severe acne that challenged his confidence and sense of self-worth. He wondered if he would ever be socially acceptable to others.
He was intensely interested in athletics—particularly basketball—and was good enough to be able to play on the team as a freshman. But in later years, he was cut from the team and the sport he loved. Consequently, as he described it, “I turned to the world of words.” That became an immense blessing for him in his political, university, and educational assignments and to all of us he now serves as one of the Lord’s prophets, seers, and revelators.

A young woman named Thricia felt feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness after doing something wrong. She began to listen to Church music, watch Church videos, and study gospel talks more intently, but the feelings didn’t go away. Eventually she decided to talk to her branch president. As she met with him, she felt the love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ for her. Now she feels grateful that through the Savior’s Atonement, she can be forgiven of her sins and receive help to rise above her weaknesses. “What I hold on to right now is that He is always with me in this journey,” she says.

Peter felt much better about Grandpa’s condition after that lesson. But then he began to wonder if it would hurt Grandpa to have his spirit leave his sick body. Grandpa was already suffering so much that Peter couldn’t stand that thought. Mom suggested that he talk to Grandpa about it. She said that Grandpa lived close to Heavenly Father already and that he would explain his feelings to Peter.
Sure enough, when Peter told Grandpa his concern, Grandpa explained, “Petey, do you remember that day I took you to the zoo last year?”
“Yes. We stayed so long and had such fun that I fell asleep in the car on the way home.”
“That’s right. You didn’t know that when we got home, I lovingly picked you up and carefully tucked you in your bed. The next morning you were surprised to see where you were. You knew that you were in a different place from where you fell asleep. You didn’t know how you got there, but you knew that someone who loved you took you there. Well, that’s how I believe it will be. Perhaps I will fall asleep, and when I awake, my spirit will be somewhere else. I won’t hurt anymore or be uncomfortable, and I’ll know that Someone who loves me took me there.”
Feeling Grandpa’s arm about him while they talked helped Peter realize that Grandpa wasn’t frightened. And as he closed Grandpa’s door behind him, Peter felt a sense of reverent excitement for the eternal things that Grandpa would experience.

It all started when, during one of her hospital stays, Brittany began drawing funny, chaotic cartoon scenes and posting them on her door. One scene featured a carnival with roller coasters, bumper cars, a person stuck in a fake cannon, and even someone getting buried by an out-of-control cotton-candy machine. Another showed different events in the hospital, including a patient escaping in a wheelchair.
Children especially loved her drawings, and all sorts of people would stop at her door to smile and laugh. Brittany ended up making copies of these drawings so the hospital could put them up on the walls. She’d found that something she did for fun could provide a way to bless others.

It was Christmas Eve. We had just gotten our new pajamas, a tradition in our family. The kids played Christmas music and everyone danced around. No one was grumpy; everyone was happy, smiling, and having fun. Knowing that I was expecting another child, I was thinking about how much I loved our family, about how excited I was to have one more child on the way.
Then I felt a distinct impression. The Spirit whispered to me that one of our family members wouldn’t be with us next year.
Later that night, as my husband, Tim, and I were putting gifts under the tree, he told me that he had felt an impression earlier that evening that one of our family members wouldn’t be with us for our next Christmas Eve. I told Tim I had received the same impression.
Before we left on a post-Christmas trip to visit family out of state, Tim talked to our children about being safe while we traveled. We were troubled by the thought of losing a family member on our trip, but we felt reassured that all would be well. We traveled, had a great visit with family members, and returned home safely.
Soon it was time for my regular prenatal checkup. The doctor delivered sad news. An ultrasound confirmed that the baby had died two weeks before the visit.
As Tim and I drove home, devastated, we realized that two weeks before had been Christmas Eve. We don’t know exactly when the spirit enters the body, but Tim and I feel that our baby got to be with our family, if only for a moment, on that Christmas Eve with everyone dancing around and being happy. We felt so much joy, and we feel the baby was a part of it. When he left us, we believe he became the member of our family who wouldn’t be with us the next Christmas Eve. I believe that someday we’ll get to see our baby again. I’m grateful for the peace that brings to me.

“But I didn’t join right off,” Jack said. “I kind of sat back and doubted for a while, but I wish I hadn’t.” His Las Vegas excursion helped him appreciate the truths they were teaching him. “I looked around at the people there and thought ‘Lots of these people have money, but they’re still looking for something to make them happy,’” Jack said. Maybe he really could find what he was looking for in the Church.

He’d previously been attending Sunday School with a lackadaisical attitude, but now he decided to take the gospel seriously and learn some more. He began the missionary lessons and discovered that it would take the gospel to make him happy—happier than banking billions from bubble gum ever could. “Once the missionaries started teaching me, it only took about a month and a half before I was baptized,” he said.

Happy music played as Jaechan and Mom got up from their seats in the school gym. Bunches of bright balloons floated along the walls as the other kids and their parents talked excitedly.
Tomorrow was the first day of school, and in South Korea new students always went to a special program to celebrate the start of school. As he listened to the songs and speakers, Jaechan felt excited. He couldn’t wait to start learning!
After the program, Mom and Jaechan walked down the school halls. When they got to his classroom, Jaechan met his teacher. She seemed really nice.
Later Mom and Jaechan walked outside into the warm spring sunshine. Even the sun and the sky seemed happy for school to start.
The next morning, Mom walked Jaechan to the school gate. She hugged him tight. “I love you,” she said. “Have a good first day.”
“I will,” Jaechan said. “I love you too!” He waved goodbye and turned to walk to his classroom, just like they had practiced.
As Jaechan walked down the hall, he started to worry. Is this the right way? Jaechan stopped and looked around. He turned and walked down a different hall. Soon everything felt all mixed up.
Jaechan took a deep breath. He knew he had been in this hallway yesterday. He kept walking and went through a big set of doors.
But Jaechan didn’t see his classroom, with desks and friends and his nice teacher. He saw the gym. And now there were no people or balloons. It was just a big empty room.
Tears filled Jaechan’s eyes. He tried not to panic, but he was scared. He didn’t know how to find his classroom. He knelt to pray. “Heavenly Father, I’m lost. Please help Mom to come find me and help me get to my class.”
Jaechan stood up. He took a few more deep breaths. Then he waited.
A few minutes later, Mom came around the corner. “Jaechan!” She ran to him and held him close. “What happened?”
Jaechan burst into tears. He was so relieved to see Mom. “I couldn’t find my classroom,” he said. “So I prayed that you would come find me.”
Mom wiped the tears from his cheeks. “I’m glad you said a prayer,” she said. “I was on my way home. Then I had a feeling that I should turn around and make sure you found your classroom. When you weren’t there, I looked all over. Then I found you!”
Jaechan held Mom’s hand as they walked down the right hallway. Jaechan had stopped crying. He knew Heavenly Father had answered his prayer, and everything was OK. When they got to the classroom, he heard the other kids inside laughing and having fun.
“Jaechan! We are so happy to see you,” Jaechan’s teacher said as he walked in.
“Thanks,” Jaechan said with a small bow. He gave Mom one more hug. It was going to be a good first day of school after all.

When I was in the National Football League, I looked up to Gifford Nielsen, who had also played for BYU before going on to the NFL, eventually becoming a sportscaster and later a General Authority Seventy. I ran into him one day on a golf course, and he gave me advice that changed the course of my professional career.
We were sitting in a golf cart, just me and him, and after I told him about my plan to go into television like he had after I finished playing football, he gave me advice to not continue pursuing a career that would require me to be at the games on Sundays. That way, I’d always be able to have a calling on Sundays and serve in the Church.
It was that simple, but it was advice that I hadn’t thought about. And that changed the course of my life.

President Hinckley himself is not intimidated by a difficult task. As newlyweds, the Hinckleys moved into the Hinckley farmhouse—a summer home with no furnace. Kathy says, “Dad approached this problem the way we would see him solve many others—head-on. He ordered a furnace and began reading the installation instructions. The furnace worked perfectly. He’s wanted us to take on challenges using the same approach—decide on what you want, follow the instructions carefully, and work at it.”

While at the hospital where they took my daughter Natalie (who had already passed), I was in a state of shock. I was completely numb, physically and mentally. Things were happening around me that I could see but not feel: police asking questions, friends crying, medical staff informing. It’s all a blur yet perfectly clear.
My former bishop and his wife were there. A colleague of mine had called them. My daughter, Natalie, and I had moved from their ward only a few months prior. My bishop and his wife were beloved friends of ours.
The bishop’s wife, also named Natalie, said I would be staying with them. The next thing I knew, I was in their vehicle riding back to my old neighborhood. I had no comprehension of time passing, yet I was aware it was dawn of the next day when I received a priesthood blessing from the bishop and a friend.
I was kept in the loop with all of the funeral arrangements, yet I was unaware of all the details. I would get dressed when I was told to get dressed. I would get in the car when I was told we had somewhere to go. I was a robot following simple commands. That was all I was capable of doing. Surprisingly, I had not yet shed a tear.
My daughter’s funeral was beautiful. There was a lot of laughter mixed with tears, and the Spirit was very much present. My oldest daughter, Victoria, traveled back to Utah from another state. She wrote a song and performed it at the funeral.
I was never approached about the funeral costs except to be informed it was being handled. Within a few weeks the funeral had been paid in full by donations from Church members.
At the time, I was still staying with my former bishop’s family. Members from my previous ward were looking for a new place for me to live. A cute little basement apartment became available, and the next thing I knew, I was signing a lease. This did not happen by my own doing. It was the actions of a network of Church members, including my dear friend Natalie, the bishop’s wife.
Ward members helped move my personal effects and got me and Victoria settled in. The first two months’ rent had been paid in advance—again, by Church member donations. I still had no perception of time, and I was still emotionally numb to a certain degree, yet I was starting to get feeling back.
A few weeks after my daughter’s death, the realization and magnitude of what had happened started to creep in. It was like heavy, thick black smoke seeping in at first, followed by all-consuming billows until I was surrounded by complete darkness. Grief in its rawest has its own dimension of blackness.
Natalie had died on Thanksgiving Day. It was now Christmas. The holidays only magnified my loss. The agony lingered throughout the day and tormented me throughout the night. It was relentless. The tears poured endlessly for days. Minutes passed like hours. Hours passed like days. Days passed like years.
As a divorced woman, I did not have a husband who could go out and earn a living. If I could have, I would have curled up in a ball, locked myself in a closet, and remained there forever. But I didn’t have that luxury. I had to somehow gather the strength to function. I had to find a job. I was working when Thanksgiving Day happened, but somehow in all the chaos, I had forgotten about my job. I could have gone back to it, but my Natalie loved to hang out there, and the thought of going back without her was unbearable.
By the first week of January, I had gotten a low-paying job. I tried to act like I was normal. My body kept going, but I felt like my soul had died. No one knew I was a hollow shell of a being just going through the motions. It was only during the drive to and from work that I was able to break down emotionally. This was my new normal.
I started going to my new ward a little at a time. I just knew if someone asked me how I was doing, I would fall to pieces. I desperately wanted to go to church, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less make eye contact. I wished with all my heart that I could be invisible. More than anything, I just wanted to rip this all-consuming pain out of my chest!
I have no idea what the sisters in Relief Society thought of me, and at the time I didn’t much care. I was too busy just trying to breathe! I’m sure I gave off the impression that I wanted to be left alone, for none of them bothered me. They did, however, occasionally give me a warm smile that I found a little comforting—just the exact small dose to keep me from running out the nearest exit, which was a constant thought.
Time is a healer. It doesn’t erase events, but it allows gaping wounds to slowly close.
That fateful Thanksgiving Day was in 2011, and it took me a few years to realize just how much I was helped by my brothers and sisters in the Church. I felt like I was carried off the battlefield after having been critically wounded. I was nursed back to health and cared for until I could stand on my own.
Countless blessings have come my way, in a variety of ways. My testimony has grown to near full maturity. I know now what it feels like to be held in the loving arms of our Savior.
So to answer my friend’s question, “How did the Church help you through this ordeal?” I say, “They didn’t help me. They saved me.”

In March 2012, three months after my conversion and baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I entered the bishop’s office to ask him questions about the Johannesburg Temple where he had recently visited. He calmly said, with real assurance and firm conviction: “Brother, the temple is heaven!” Now, seven years later, in 2019, my eternal companion and I have just completed 12 months of service as full-time temple workers in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple. Looking back, what seemed at the time to be an excessive zeal on the part of our bishop became—over the course of my Church service—my own fervent reality of faith, and a grasp of an inner and personal understanding: The temple is literally the house of Heavenly Father here on earth.

Thunk, thunk, thunk! My two older brothers and I were “washboarding” our baseball bats along the rails on our banister. There were twenty-three steps heading down in a gentle, sloping curve. Between the noise of the bats and our own squeals, we didn’t hear Mom come in.
“What are you three doing? I left you working. You promised that if we moved here, you’d help with the fixing-up. Now get busy.”
We trudged back to our chores.
I felt like Cinderella. Work, work, work! And I couldn’t even escape to a friend’s house, since I hadn’t met anyone here yet.
I sprayed my bedroom walls with water and scraped the ancient layers of wallpaper till strips of brown paper lay in soggy piles at my feet.
When we first moved here, it was fun. We all enjoyed destruction. We helped knock down rickety sheds in the yard and plaster from the walls. By now, however, everything was drudgery.
Our house had been built by our great-great-grandfather, and when the opportunity came for my father to buy it, he leaped at the chance. Mom was more reluctant. I understood why better now.
I brushed a sweaty strand of hair from my eyes. At least the scraping was nearly done. Next we’d patch cracks and put up the wallpaper that waited in my bottom drawer.
As I was scraping near the mantel, I noticed marks on the plaster. I uncovered more and saw that someone had painted flowers twining all around the fireplace—and down near the baseboard something was scribbled: Lizzie Johnson, August 10, 1905!
“Well, for goodness’ sake,” Dad said when I showed him. “Her last name shows that she’s a relation. Let’s look her up in the old family Bible.”
Dad lifted the heavy book from its shelf and gently turned the brittle pages. He found where the names of my great-great-grandfather’s family were listed. They were all boys except one. “Elizabeth Johnson” was written in faded, curlicue letters.
“That must be her,” Dad said. “Lizzie is short for Elizabeth, so she’s your great-great-aunt. I bet your bedroom was hers when she was a girl.”
Suddenly Dad clapped a hand to his forehead. “I knew that name sounded familiar! I think I have her journal with our family papers. She’s one of the people your mother and I have done the temple work for. Would you like to read her journal?”
I was jumping up and down with excitement. “Yes! Please, please, please!”
That night I eagerly read what Lizzie had written. The June 6, 1905, entry made me gasp:
I was angry with Freddy when he took my journal and drew pictures in it.
So Lizzie was tormented by her brothers too!
I’m not mad anymore. We were rattling sticks along the stair railing, and he broke a spindle in it. Dad says he has to do extra chores all week. Poor Freddy!
I dashed to the stairway and searched the banister till I came to a spindle with a thin crack where it had been glued. What a strange feeling it gave me—it was like secrets being whispered through time!
Over the next three days I read Lizzie’s journal. She was so much like me! I felt as if I knew all about her and, strangely enough, as if she knew all about me.
What happened last week made me feel even closer to Lizzie. It was a steamy, sweltering day, and Jacob and I were digging in the cool earth beneath our back porch.
We found pieces of broken china buried there. We pretended we were archaeologists and sorted them into bags.
Then I dug up something small and round, caked with red clay.
“What is it?” Jacob asked.
“I think it’s a doorknob. I’m going to wash it off.”
As I carefully scrubbed away the mud, a rosebud mouth, dark eyes, and round pink cheeks emerged. It was the tiny head of a doll, made of thick china! Even her black hair was china. Except for a few nicks, it was in amazingly good condition.
“Cool!” Jacob cried. “Let’s see if we can find the rest.”
It felt sort of gruesome, digging for body parts.
We found her feet and hands, minus the tip of one foot and a thumb. Mama said her body had probably been made of cloth and had rotted away. She helped me sew a new body from muslin, and a gown of pink taffeta.
How did the doll end up beneath our porch? Did someone leave it there and forget about it till it was buried by time? I guess we’ll never know.
I like to think it belonged to Lizzie. I hope she knows that I have it now and is glad.
When school starts, I’ll make other friends, but Lizzie is my best friend right now. I think we knew and loved each other before I was born.
My family have only been members of the Church for a few years. We have a lot of work to do, finding and turning in our ancestors’ names and dates so that we can do the temple work for them. I’m glad that Lizzie’s work is done so that we can be together some day. Thanks to her, I know that all those names belong to real people, people who were once kids who played with dolls and rattled sticks along the railing—like my friend Lizzie.

Unfortunately, all such carefree adventures soon came to an end when our paying passengers arrived from the United States for the scheduled raft trip. We had to disappoint them because a serious drought had made the raft expedition impossible. Instead, we decided to motor up the Cuyuni (Ku-you-knee) and Chicunan (chee-kuu-non) rivers in a 30-foot dugout canoe, hike over a mountain range, and then float down the Carrao River past Angel Falls, the highest falls in the world.
As we motored up into the jungle, dragging the heavy canoe bodily upstream over rocky rapids, I prayed for protection from rocks, electric eels, and piranhas. The river got lower and lower. Soon we had to get out and push, pull, and dig for clearance in the sand as we waded through the dark, infested waters from deep pool to deep pool. The going was so slow that we began to wonder if we would make it. The scenery, however, was beautiful, and we saw an incredible array of wildlife—everything from capuchino monkeys to caimens (a kind of crocodile) to orange-breasted falcons to giant click beetles—and a whole army of other jungle citizens of the feathered, furry, and scaly kinds.
All the hard going put us two days behind schedule. Worse, in the process of pulling, pushing, and straining the canoe up the almost dry river, I tore a major muscle in my back. The pain was almost unbearable. We finally made it to the crossing, a mountain range covered with jungle. Everyone had his own load to carry, so I had to carry my own 80- to 90-pound load. I couldn’t take any pain killers or I could never have gotten over the range. So I hung in the back of the group and cried with pain the first day. The next morning I got up earlier than anyone else and had Terry help me on with my pack. All alone I marched up the small creek bed we were using as a trail. The pain was the worst I’ve ever experienced. I sang hymns to myself and prayed the whole way up. I was in such pain that I couldn’t stop to take my pack off or bend over or anything. So I trudged on. Shortly my prayers were answered. My back became numb. My leg stopped bleeding, and before I knew it I was over the mountain, lying on the river beach. I know that my Heavenly Father eased the pain and lifted me with energy to march up over that hot, steep, 2,000-foot mountain with seeming ease and comfort. The rest of the trip the passengers, all non-Mormon, called me Moses as I hobbled around with the help of a large wooden staff. They asked why I didn’t drink coffee or rum, and that gave me a chance to tell them about the Church.

What amazes me about the Book of Mormon is the great and eternal change it causes in people even before they are members of the Church. As a missionary in the Mexico Cuernavaca Mission, I saw this great change firsthand.
When I had been on my mission for six months, a member of the branch referred my companion and me to teach a 20-year-old woman and her family. The young woman didn’t understand what Latter-day Saints believed and asked us many questions. Knowing that the Book of Mormon answers questions of the soul, we gave her the book and shared the promise it contains about praying sincerely to know if it is true.
For three weeks she attended church, and we continued meeting with her. We didn’t know that she had already taken an important step: she had prayed about the Book of Mormon. During one particular lesson, she told us of her experience. She had been thinking a lot about the lessons we were sharing, and she desired to pray on her own. She knelt down and asked God if the Book of Mormon was true. The peace she felt after praying encouraged her to read more of the book. While reading, she felt the Spirit sweep over her.
Recounting her experience, she told us, “I felt more special than I had ever felt before. Something began to fill all the empty space I had in my life that nothing else could fill. I felt so happy that I began to cry. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling, but I knew that my Heavenly Father had answered me, that He knew me, and that He loved me enough to listen to me and answer my prayer.”
I felt so much joy in my heart when she recounted her experience. I knew I was on sacred ground on that occasion. The Holy Ghost confirmed to me that her words were true. From her testimony I was reminded of the great love our Heavenly Father has for us; He loves us so much He has given us the Book of Mormon as an instrument to know Him and His truth. When we obey the principles found in the Book of Mormon, our lives will change.
I still remember how that lesson ended. The sister asked us, “What happens now that I know the Book of Mormon is true?”
“Be baptized,” we responded.
Her reply was simple but reflected the firmness and simplicity of her testimony: “Then I will be baptized.”