Gospel Story Finder

One morning as I finished reading from and pondering the Book of Mormon, I realized that I would again finish it by the end of the year. This realization brought back the memory of my brother, whom I cared for in my home during his final weeks with terminal cancer in 2005.
Oliver was determined to fulfill a promise to himself to follow the counsel of President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) and read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.1 But by that fall, Oliver still had many pages to go. Eventually he became so weak that he could no longer read to himself.
Determined to keep his commitment, Oliver asked me if I would read the Book of Mormon to him. I was much further along in my own reading, but I was glad to begin where he had left off.
By reading to Oliver every day, I was able to help him reach his goal to finish the book by year’s end, just days before he died. By that time he could hardly speak audibly, but his mind was clear and active. With much effort, he often expressed his appreciation to me for the gift I had given him, saying he could now die in peace because he had fulfilled his promise.
I had read the Book of Mormon many times before, but I had never felt its spirit so powerfully or understood its precepts so clearly as I did during those waning months of my brother’s life. Truly, Oliver had given me the greater gift.

As a young man, I committed a serious sin, a sin for which I knew excommunication would follow just as surely as I knew the sun would rise the next day. But I had convinced myself that no price was too great to pay for “true love,” and I was sure that this love would justify me in the end.
Later, I knew that I must go to my priesthood leader and tell him the heavy secret that weighed down my mind and soul. Just as I had known, this loving man immediately took the steps necessary to excommunicate me from the Church. He did so with all the love and compassion of an understanding, gentle man who knew what must be done.
The reality and pain of my excommunication did not hit me until I returned to my family’s home with the news. I was sullen as I sought the right words to tell my father that the only thing I had to give him on his birthday was the news that I had been excommunicated from the Church he had loved and served so faithfully all his life.
For the next several months, time seemed to stand still for me; it seemed as though my life was a continual nightmare. No one seemed to understand my situation. There was no organization or group to support me or offer understanding. My life lost all direction and meaning. I was listless, tossed like a ship without sails, rudder, or anchor. Because I lost sight of all my former goals, my feelings were almost totally dead.
After spending some time at home, I met my childhood sweetheart and we began dating. Several months later we were married, but only after a very bad courtship. Because I had no priesthood, we could not enter the temple to be married, so we settled for a civil wedding. From the beginning our relationship was unstable.
I realized that attending church was a necessary part of the repentance process I had committed myself to, but I found it an almost overwhelmingly painful experience. Over and over again I reminded myself of my condition. Many times unknowing friends called on me to say a prayer or answer a question about the lesson and I knew that the only thing I was allowed to say was, “I’m sorry—I can’t.” In many ways I was reminded of my serious transgression.
As painful as these and other situations were, I was able to bear all but one. Each week as the sacrament was blessed and passed, in my heart I grieved and wept and prayed. But, because of my transgression and excommunication, I could not seal the holy baptismal contract by partaking of the sacrament. I had broken my contract. I longed to be one with the Lord and to be freed from my mountain of guilt.
Years earlier I had experienced the powers of Satan and his followers. Now I soon learned with great clarity the divine power contained in the righteous exercise of the priesthood. I could no longer exert this power to ward off these evil influences. Over the next several months, I called on my father many times to bless both me and my house and to cast out the darkness.
Later, my wife gave birth to our first child, a son. This was a major turning point for us. How lonely I felt as I watched my son being blessed, unable to speak or participate in that special ordinance. I also felt that his birth added a big financial burden and that this angered me. I became bitter, accusing God of adding more trials to my life than I could bear. I withdrew totally from the Church and the light of the gospel.
The next several years were total misery. As more children came, they were blessed by their grandfather. Refusing to let this hurt so much any longer, I became numb inside. Gone were the yearnings to rejoin the Church—or so I said. Gradually I slipped into more sin, each time in effect crying louder to the Lord and to my family, “See! I don’t need the Church!” The louder I yelled, the more I knew inside that I was wrong. In public I gloried in the disgrace and the hurt I was inflicting on my family, hoping this would justify me and stop my feelings of guilt. Throughout the entire experience I knew in my heart the truth. Perhaps that’s why I fought so hard. The more guilty I felt, the more deeply involved I became in sinful acts. Always I was trying to show the world that I was in charge of my life. I didn’t need anyone else.
Eventually, completely worn down from the internal conflicts, my wife had no choice but to leave me. This made me happy, I thought—freedom at last! The next two weeks were the loneliest of my life. I had no other true friends, and I would not seek comfort at my parents’ home.
Finally I was able to acknowledge that my family meant more to me than anything else. I yearned for my wife to come back. Though many problems remained, we agreed to reunite. I began removing myself from sinful associations and situations. But I still had no real desire to rejoin the Church—this desire came only gradually.
When my first daughter was born, I realized that I must make a decision. With three children I knew that I could no longer go on living for just today; I had to make a choice and live by it. For months my soul was in conflict. I wanted to choose the right, but I also wanted to be sure that my choice was not based on ulterior motives. I felt I couldn’t return just to make my wife, children, and parents happy. I knew that real happiness for all of us would come only if I actually regained a testimony of my own.
After much prayer and study and struggle, I began to feel a small spark inside me that brought with it memories of earlier spiritual experiences that I could no longer deny. The feeling slowly grew. And finally I felt that the Lord still loved me, even though I had been excommunicated. There was hope! I felt I was moving again!
However, knowing I was on the right path didn’t make anything easier. In fact, for a while, the harder I worked the worse things got. I struggled with great tests and hardships. It seemed that when a blessing was near, my life would start to come apart again and I would start to feel despair once more.
But I held on, and, true to his promise, Heavenly Father poured out a blessing. After much effort and great help and support from friends and leaders in the Church, I was able to reenter the waters of baptism. What joy I felt!
But the tests did not stop there. For the next year and a half I worked hard to prepare myself to receive the priesthood. My desire for restitution had returned in full. I was glad to be a member once again, but I longed for full fellowship. My struggle finally ended when I received a call from a General Authority asking me to bring my family and meet with him. With great anticipation, fears, and joy, my family and I drove to that memorable meeting. The children were excited because they were going to see an apostle of the Lord. I was thrilled at the thought of being able to bless the child my wife was expecting.
After a thorough and loving interview, this kind man of God asked my wife to join us, and then he placed his hands on my head and made me a whole man. He “restored me wholly as I was before with all the rights and powers of the priesthood.” My wife and I wept.
Then the Apostle turned to my wife and asked her if she would like a blessing. After she said yes, he turned to me and told me that the only way I would know that my priesthood was restored would be for me to use it. He asked me to bless my wife and offered to stand with me. During the next few minutes, I learned more about the priesthood than I could ever have learned from reading volumes of books.
The battle is not over. Some of my most severe challenges have raised their heads since that day, and many more will come, but I now can call upon the Holy Ghost to guide me.
I have been able to bless my second daughter and have exercised my priesthood in many other ways. My wife and I are now preparing for one of the most important days of our lives—the day we take our children dressed in white into the holy room of the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity.
My greatest regret is that I rejected these blessings years ago; the price I have paid to regain them has been a terrible one. I am so grateful to be back, but oh! how much wiser I would have been never to have strayed.

When I was a young man about the age of some of you deacons here, my dad was bishop of the ward in our little farming town of Banida in southeastern Idaho. I remember the first time he brought me with him to Salt Lake City to attend a general priesthood meeting. In those years, Dad always seemed to me to be really old. As I recognize now, he must have been around thirty-eight years of age. I was happy to be with him.

I remember we sat in the balcony there on the north side. Before the meeting started, Dad pointed out which one of the Brethren on the stand was President Heber J. Grant and which were his Counselors. I saw the Twelve Apostles and the other Brethren. And that night, a warm feeling of love and respect for the leaders of the Church came over me and has continued to grow to this day.

That night, I decided I wanted to do everything I could to support my dad as bishop. I didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass or disappoint him. To this day, I am grateful for those feelings that came to me that night.

You may remember the sweet experience shared by President Romney, who had been reading the Book of Mormon with his son. He related: “I remember reading it with one of my lads when he was very young. … We were each reading aloud alternate paragraphs of those last three marvelous chapters of Second Nephi. I heard his voice breaking and thought he had a cold, but we went on to the end of the three chapters. As we finished he said to me, ‘Daddy, do you ever cry when you read the Book of Mormon?’

“‘Yes, son,’ I answered. ‘Sometimes the spirit of the Lord so witnesses to my soul that the Book of Mormon is true that I do cry.’

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘that is what happened to me tonight.’” (In Conference Report, Apr. 1949, p. 41.)

There are those of us who have laid away our little ones in the grave, and we had that responsibility. A little daughter was born to us over in Holland while I was president of the mission there, and we kept her until she was three and a half years old. My wife has said time and time again that she knew the angels brought that spirit to her because she felt their presence, and yet we laid her away in the grave. If we had to feel that that was the end, we would have given anything in this world to have her back again. And then we come to this great knowledge that we have in the restoration of the gospel, that she will be ours in the eternal world and we will have the joy of seeing her grow up without sin, unto salvation. Sometimes I have thought that probably some of these choice spirits did not need the experience here in mortality like other children, and that is why the Lord has seen fit to call them home.

Sometime after our mission, we felt prompted by the Spirit to leave our home in Minnesota and to move to Utah. There, I started a new business with two of my friends. We decided to buy some land to develop into lots for homes that we could sell. It had been an excellent real estate market. We were quite happy with how the business was going. But it was short lived. The great recession came. Land values crashed. We were in debt and I had no good way to resolve the situation except to go back to my old field of consulting. It was not a good time as the whole economy was in deep trouble.
I was not sure what to do. But I had learned in my life that I could turn to my Heavenly Father for guidance, no matter what the situation might be. Not long after, an opportunity came to me to move to Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. I did not want to move there, but it seemed that it was the only way out of my current difficulties. We took the opportunity and left Utah. Just before departing, I was called to be an Area Seventy in the Middle East. Once again, though I did not understand at first, I was grateful to have kept trusting the Lord—to let Him prevail in our lives.

The operation continued on a small scale for several weeks. Lt. Halvorsen began dropping not only his own candy rations, but also those that were contributed by the other men in his company. One day he walked into headquarters and noticed a stack of mail addressed to “Uncle Wiggly Wings” and “Chocolate Flyer,” Tempelhof Air Base. Since he was unsure about how the air force would react, he quickly left but was called in by his commander a few days later.
“What have you been doing?” queried the senior officer. To Lt. Halvorsen’s surprise, his commander told him that a candy bar that had been dropped on the end of a runway had hit a German reporter in the head, and the story was now all over the front pages in Berlin.
“The German people loved it and that kept me from getting into trouble. My commander thanked me for the good idea and gave permission to continue the candy flying,” said Col. Halvorsen. The servicemen were by now contributing not only their candy rations but also their handkerchiefs. They soon ran out of handkerchiefs, and the men donated shirtsleeves to be used as parachutes. Finally they began attaching notes asking that the parachutes be returned to use again; most were.

My father was very fond of reading the Bible. He wasn’t a Catholic, but my mother was. She took us to the Catholic church from the time we were small. Then, in 1956, when I was twelve, the LDS missionaries came to our home. They were not only competent but very inspired in getting my mother and us children involved. Each time they came, they read something to us from the scriptures—almost always from the Book of Mormon—and the next time they came, they asked us to report on what they had told us and on what we had read. The three of us children still at home were baptized with my father and mother six months later.

Lori sat on her older sister’s bed as Karyn finished packing her temple bag. Karyn was getting married today.
Lori was excited to go to the wedding reception that evening, but she also felt sad. Her older brother, who had served a mission, could go inside the temple with Karyn. Her parents could go too. But Lori and her two younger brothers couldn’t go inside.
“I wish I could be in the temple with you,” Lori said.
Karyn looked up from her packing. “I do too, but you’ll be right outside. And someday I’ll go to the temple with you when you get married.”
Lori didn’t feel so sad anymore, but she wondered about something else. “How did you know you wanted to marry Matt?” she asked.
Karyn sat down beside Lori. “A long time ago I learned that Heavenly Father has a plan for me. When I met Matt, I realized we could fulfill that plan together.”
“Have you finished that plan?” Lori asked.
Karyn shook her head no. “Matt and I want to have children, finish our education, and much more.”
Lori looked at the beautiful white wedding dress hanging on Karyn’s closet door. “Your dress is so pretty,” she said.
Karyn smiled. “That’s another part of the plan,” she said. “I always wanted to be married in the temple, so my dress needs to be modest.”
A few hours later Lori watched Karyn and Matt come out of the temple. Their faces glowed.
Lori ran to Karyn and threw her arms around her.
Several weeks later Lori got a picture in the mail. It was a photo of Karyn and Matt standing in front of the temple. Karyn had written at the top, “Heavenly Father has a plan for you.”
Lori put the picture on her dresser. She promised herself that someday she would go to the temple and have the same glow that shone on her sister’s face.

Martin was born in the United States. But then his family moved to a country in Europe called the Czech Republic. The people there spoke Czech. Martin knew some of the Czech words his Primary teacher used. He could say ahoj, which meant “hi.” But he mostly spoke English.
Martin loved his school. He had an English teacher and a Czech teacher. There was a big playroom with fun wooden toys.
One day Martin was playing with puppets when a new boy came into the classroom. The English teacher said, “This is Josef. It’s his first day of school. He doesn’t know much English yet.”
Josef had a worried look on his face. Martin thought he must be scared on his first day of school. Maybe Josef couldn’t understand the English teacher.
The teacher led Josef to a table with wooden puzzles on it. Without meaning to, Josef knocked over the whole stack of puzzles. Crash! The puzzle pieces flew everywhere! Josef looked like he might cry.
Martin wanted to tell Josef not to feel bad. It was just an accident. But Martin didn’t know how to tell him in Czech. He stopped playing with his puppets and walked over to the puzzle table. He smiled and started stacking one of the puzzles. He showed Josef how to put it back together. Soon he and Josef finished all the puzzles. They put them back on the table.
For the first time that day, Josef smiled. Martin felt very happy. He had made a new friend without saying a word.

A mother and father were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. They named her Karen. The mother and father loved Karen very much. They believed that the most important thing they could do to teach Karen to be happy was help her gain a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Every morning and evening Karen’s mother and father helped her pray, and after a few years Karen was able to pray all by herself.
They taught her about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and Their love for her. Her parents told her scripture stories, and even though Karen couldn’t understand everything they said, she felt warm and happy inside as she listened. They taught her to love and be kind to others, to be honest, to take care of her body, and to live the law of tithing.
Her parents also took Karen to church. She liked Primary and listened closely to her teachers as they, too, taught her about the gospel and about how important it was to obey the commandments. All these things helped her testimony grow.
When Karen turned eight years old, she was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She received the gift of the Holy Ghost—a sweet, comforting spirit that also testified that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ lived and that the Church was true. The Holy Ghost also helped her to know what was right.
Karen loved family home evening. Her family often bore their testimonies to each other and told one another how much they loved each other and the gospel. As her parents listened to Karen, they were happy to know that her testimony was growing. And Karen was grateful for all the people who had helped her gain her testimony.

My memories of being a five-year-old consist mainly of frayed volleyball nets, floor polish on maple floors, referee shirts and whistles, and roughly scribbled rosters. My dad coached a team of young volleyball players in our ward in Taylorsville, Utah. I was his “assistant.”

My dad taught the team principles of hard work, team spirit, honesty, trust in self and in others, goal setting, perseverance, and sacrifice. There were prayers under the bleachers, 5:00 A.M. practices on Saturdays, and ice cream socials at our house.

One of the most important lessons I learned from my dad and his players was that of honesty. When a net was touched inadvertently, or a pass mishandled, my dad taught each boy that it was important to reveal his error with a raised hand. Later, that lesson would make a lasting impression, not only on the members of the team, but also on a five-year-old “assistant coach.”

The team had started out as a ragged group. But in May 1970, when the all-Church championships were held at the Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City, the team from the Taylorsville First Ward was there to compete. (The last all-Church championships were held in 1972.) When it was time for the final match, the four years the team had spent playing together paid off. Just one more match against the Winder Third Ward stood in the way of their dream of winning the championship.

There was a spirited atmosphere at the championship match. Hundreds of people filled the bleachers to watch the competition. I took my place on the floor by the coach when the horn sounded to commence play. I don’t remember much of that match, but I do remember the end of the final game. The crowd cheered as the final point was scored by my dad’s team, and participants and spectators flooded the floor. A husky, formidable player on our team named Brent had made the final point with a decisive spike. So powerful was his contact with the ball that even the experienced referee didn’t notice that Brent’s finger had brushed the net. It was a penalty that could have easily been forgotten. But amidst the bedlam, Brent’s hand slowly rose into the air.

The teams were reassembled, the crowd took their seats, and the game continued. Shortly thereafter, the game ended, and my dad’s team had captured the championship they had been working at for four years. They could not only feel good about winning, but about doing it honestly.

Many years have passed since my days of chasing volleyballs for my father and his players. But the memory of a coach teaching the value of honesty to his team still remains firmly planted in my memory. From my low vantage point on the floor that day, most people seemed tall. But the way I saw it, Brent stood the tallest.

This summer, for our Hatch family reunion, we went swimming at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. I was swimming with Grandpa when I saw two paper bills at the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t reach them, so Grandpa got them for me. He asked me if we should try to find the owner. He didn’t tell me how much money it was. He said that the amount shouldn’t change our minds about what to do. I wanted to keep the money, but I knew what was right, so I told Grandpa to find the owner.
He announced over the loudspeaker that whoever identified the money would have it returned. Several kids said that they had lost money, but none of them knew the right amount. Then a man said that he had lost thirty-three dollars—a twenty-dollar bill, a ten-dollar bill, and three one-dollar bills. Grandpa told him that I had found the twenty- and ten-dollar bills and gave them to him. The man was really grateful to have his money back—it was all that he had with him. I felt so good! I just wished that I had found his other three dollars, too.

The boy you are encouraging may seem too timid to be a powerful priesthood servant. Another one of my sons was so shy as a little boy that he wouldn’t walk into a store and talk to a clerk. He was too afraid. I worried as I prayed over his priesthood future. I thought of him in the mission field—that didn’t sound promising. I was led to a scripture in Proverbs: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
I carved “Bold as a Lion” on his board, beneath an image of a large lion’s head roaring. On his mission and in the years that followed, he fulfilled the hope in my carving. My once-shy son preached the gospel with great conviction and faced dangers with bravery. He was magnified in his responsibilities to represent the Lord.
That can happen for the young man you are leading. You need to build his faith that the Lord can transform him into a servant braver than the timid boy you now see.

A few years later I was finished with school and was working as an apprentice cabinetmaker, putting away every pound I could for my mission.

One early winter day at work I got a call from Mum.

“Granddad’s all right,” she said. “But he’s had a stroke.”

When I arrived at Granddad’s farmhouse, I could hear him arguing with Nan as I threw my coat in the cloakroom.

“You’re not going to feed that rabbit food to me,” he bellowed. “I want bangers and mash (sausage and potatoes). It’s Thursday, and I’ve had bangers and mash every Thursday for 75 years.”

I peeked around the doorway and looked into his room. Granddad looked old and frail, but he had enough strength to sit up in bed and push away my grandmother’s hand as she tried to feed him from a plate of something green and healthy looking.

“She’ll let you go hungry then,” I said.

“Danny!” he called out and held his hand out for me to take. “I’ve been waiting for sumone to rescue me.”

“You’d better get used to the rules, or you’ll get no dinner,” I answered.

“Ahh.”

“Hello, Nan,” I said.

“Finally, someone to rescue me,” she said. “I’m going to nip into town for some things. Sit with your granddad, will you?”

“Sure.”

We heard her car rev up in the driveway. Granddad reached up and felt my arm. “Hmm, strong enough,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“What? I don’t know. I don’t think we should. Nan will be cross.”

“You do as you’re told.”

So I pulled over Granddad’s wheelchair and helped him in. I bundled up his legs and got our coats and Granddad’s cap. Then I scribbled a quick note to Nan.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked when we were outside the house. I hoped he would say ‘down the road,’ but he said what I expected.

“I fancy sum’ mushrooms,” he said, looking out toward the wet hills. I shrugged and began pushing his wheelchair over the pasture toward the first gate.

Pushing Granddad through the bumpy, slippery glens was hard work, but I didn’t really mind. He was happy and spent the next hour pointing things out to me as I grunted and groaned behind him.

When we finally reached the top of mushroom hill, I stopped to catch my breath, sitting beside Granddad’s wheelchair on the damp grass. It was cold out, and the town below was partly obscured by mist. All that rose above the haze were the trees and a few of the tall brick homes.

“I’ve always remembered what you told me here,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for more details.

“You know, about knowing where to look—for mushrooms and other stuff. A few years ago I knew someone who was a bit lost, so I began dropping hints that maybe church was a good place to look for answers. I think it helped.”

“Aye, nice to think I taught you sumthing,” he said.

I smiled. “You did.”

“How’s Stu? Haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He’s all right. I bet he’ll come see you soon. He’s going out with a really nice girl, and they’re talking of getting married in the temple.”

“He’s a good boy, is Stu.”

“Yeah, he is.”

We sat quietly for a time, looking down the hill at the rolling grass and the mist that refused to clear from the town. We stayed until, bit by bit, the cold and damp crept under our wool coats. A wind picked up from the north, and Granddad began to shiver.

“Time to go, lad,” said Granddad. “Time to go.”

“You don’t want any mushrooms?”

“Na, couldn’t be bothered today. To be honest, I just wanted to come here again—with you.”

I stood up and obediently began pushing my grandfather away from our mushroom hill.

“How do you feel?” I asked, stopping the chair and putting my hand on his shoulder.

“I feel good,” he said, putting his hand on mine.

So I started to push again, Granddad and I quietly moving toward home.

Peter, a young priest, wrote of an experience that taught him that priesthood power is very real. A young convert in his ward in Ontario, Canada, was sustained as a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood, and Peter was asked to be the “voice” in the ordination. Peter wrote: “I had never laid my hands on anybody’s head before, and I felt so inadequate. But then the Spirit reassured me that it would be fine for me to do it. …

“The young man to be ordained sat down in the chair, and I stood directly behind him. [Our Young Men president] guided me through the ordinance prayer and I repeated every word he said. After we had finished the ordination and said, ‘… and we wish to pronounce a blessing on your head at this time …’ [the Young Men president] looked at me and indicated that I was on my own.

“At that point, the priesthood entirely changed its meaning for me. It was no longer just a title, but the actual authority to act in God’s name, and I was giving that authority to someone else. I paused and waited for the Spirit to whisper to me what I was to say. It is difficult for me to describe the feelings I had that day during the blessing, but I can say that I now have a stronger testimony that the power of the priesthood is real.”

There are many people in the world who travel great distances at great personal sacrifice to go to the temple. I know our Heavenly Father is aware of their righteous desires and blesses them abundantly for their efforts. Recently a group came to the Tokyo Temple from Okinawa—nine hundred miles by plane—among them a young couple who had come to be married. It had required all the money they could possibly save to pay for their transportation, and there was nothing left for a wedding celebration or honeymoon. When those who accompanied the couple realized their plight, they dug deep into their own pockets and contributed what little they had so the couple could have money for a delightful one-day honeymoon in Tokyo. Not only did the young couple enjoy the blessings of the temple, but they also enjoyed and appreciated the generosity and kindness of their brothers and sisters. Surely Paul’s teachings to the Ephesian Saints apply, when he said, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” (Eph. 2:19.)

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was very small for my age. I was 5?2? and weighed 105 pounds. When you’re 5?2? and 105, not many coaches want you playing basketball, unless you have exceptional talent, which I didn’t. You also don’t make a very good linebacker for the football team.
I was sitting in the gym one day watching the basketball tryouts, when the wrestling coach walked by and said, “We need a few tough guys your size who can wrestle for us.”
I thought to myself, “Obviously I look pretty tough to the coach, so I’ll give this wrestling a try.” I told him I would do it.
My first problem was finding the wrestling room. After some searching, I found it was three stories under the basketball court in an unventilated, very dimly lit cubicle.
As I entered the room, I found the first thing you need to overcome in wrestling is the odor produced by 50 young men sweating in a room with no air circulation.
I found the coach. Instead of being polite and friendly as he had been the day before, he seemed grouchy and mean. He pointed to a kid across the room and said, “Wrestle him.”
I looked at the kid and thought to myself, “This will be a snap.” He was shorter than I was and looked as if he had missed a few meals. I turned to the coach to say he had made a mistake and surely there was someone else I could wrestle. As I did this, the kid grabbed me and for the next three hours gave me a wrestling lesson I’ll never forget. He rubbed my face in the mat and twisted me into positions I didn’t think possible. Finally, after three hours of mat work, I thought we were done. Not quite. Up to the halls we went, where the coach led us in wind sprints and jogging. Finally, four hours after practice began, we were finished. I sat on the bench in the locker room totally exhausted.
The coach called me into his office. He said, “How much do you weigh?”
I replied, “About 105.”
He said, “You’ll be wrestling 98 in three days.”
That was 7 percent of my body weight. “I’ll have to go without eating,” I protested.
He said, “I know.” So to my surprise, a wrestler not only had to work out for four hours, he couldn’t eat after the workout. I made weight at 98 pounds and put up with this difficult schedule for three weeks. Finally I had had enough.
I went home and told my dad that I was going to quit. I thought he would be elated after seeing how much I had suffered. Instead he said, “I never took you for a quitter. I always thought when you started something, you finished it.”
Well, if he was going to say that, I certainly would not quit now. I said, “I guess wrestling is not so bad after all.”
I stuck it out. For four long months I stuck it out. It was never easy. In fact, it was the most difficult thing I had ever done. It wasn’t glamorous. The basketball team got all the recognition. They got the nice locker room and all the new facilities, and the entire school showed up to their games. The school had to assign four members of the pep club to go to wrestling matches. No, it wasn’t glamorous. But much to my surprise, at the end of the difficult season, I had a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I had never felt before. The most difficult thing I had done in my life turned out to be the most rewarding.

I’ve written to you before but for nothing like this. I am writing to thank you for your article “How to Find Safety and Peace” (Nov. 1997) because I don’t think you’ll ever know truly how much it has helped me. I have had my fair share of sins, and pornography is probably the worst of them all. I had four magazines hidden that I would look at. I would make excuses to myself, but it got to the point where I was wondering if I could get away with buying a pornographic movie. Well, when I read your article, it knocked me back into reality. As soon as I was done reading the article, I went into my room and threw the disgusting magazines away. Thank you.
Name WithheldWashington

I have a plastic star decoration in my room that I brought home from my mission. I love how it looks when it lights up. This little star hangs on a wall so I can see it every night as I go to sleep and first thing when I wake up.
Recently I noticed that my star wasn’t attached to the wall as securely as it normally was, but I didn’t give it much thought. I was confident that the single piece of tape holding it to the wall would stick.
Then one morning my star wasn’t there—it had fallen. I decided to resecure the star with more tape. This time I used five pieces—one piece for each point of the star—to make sure it wouldn’t fall again.
That’s when I realized that my little glowing star is like each of us, and the tape holding it could represent our spiritual habits. The light we have within us is entirely dependent upon the things we do to strengthen, or secure, our testimonies. Every piece of tape I put on the star reminded me of Alma 37:6: “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.”
I also thought about how I had noticed that my star was about to fall for several days, but I did nothing to save it until it did fall. And it’s the same with our testimonies—if we become complacent and forget to do the small, spiritual practices that can help keep our faith strong, our testimonies can weaken.