Gospel Story Finder

I, too, had the privilege of serving as a stake president. I served as the first president of the Mt. Graham Stake, formed in 1938 from parts of the St. Joseph Stake. Like all of you presidents, I have experienced the sadness as well as the joy of laboring with those in difficulty.
I well remember the flood of September 1941. It rained continually the weekend of stake conference. The day after stake conference the Gila River overflowed its channel and swept through Duncan, Arizona, and environs. After consulting with my first counselor, Vernon McGrath, regarding the Saints’ immediate needs, I loaded my car with goods from the interstake welfare storehouse in Safford and drove the forty miles to Duncan. Arranging matters as best we could there, I walked the eight miles to Virden because bridges were unsafe for cars. I was filled with grief as I viewed the devastation of the houses and the farmland. Yet, in the ensuing weeks, I shared in perhaps the most fulfilling experience of my tenure as stake president. Through the high council and ward bishoprics, we organized for reconstruction. From welfare supplies and local labor we reestablished the people on the land. The contributions of the Saints throughout the area were wonderful, and, as I recall, we did not have to call on the General Welfare Committee for help. We handled it all locally ourselves.

One day each of us will give an account to the Lord.5 This awareness was evident in a serious conversation I had years ago with a dear friend facing the end of his mortal life. I asked him if he was ready to die. I’ll never forget his answer. With courage and conviction, he said, “My life is ready for inspection.”

One day I told my teacher about the things I learned in Primary and invited him to come to church. I feel happy that I shared the gospel!
Sindhu K., age 7, Karnataka, India

The fathers fell, weeping,
and mothers turned stone-cold faces
to the wind,
too weary to cry.
As I watched those broken people
I heard my mother say,
Go and bring them in.
Would she turn away if I returned
with empty arms?
Gently, then, I gathered up a child
and waded into waters
so cold and sharp
that my muscles clenched
and tears froze on my face
each time I crossed
the aching, icy river.
Hour after hour,
numbly plodding on, I saw my mother
in each stranger’s face.
And when they were all across
they wrapped me in my mother’s quilt
and sang the quiet songs
of heaven, and so cold and numb—
I slept.
And dreamed that I awoke
in Mother’s arms
and angels seemed to shout Hosanna!
And Father wept to have me
home again.

We are friends with a family who goes to another church. I asked my mom if we could give them a Book of Mormon. I gave it to their mom and asked if she would read it. She said yes. A few weeks later, she had read half of it! A few months later, I fasted that they would come to church with us. They did come to church! I know Heavenly Father answers our prayers, and I love being a missionary!
Logan A., age 6, Iowa, USA

My loving mother, Evelyn Robbins, taught me the law of tithing when I was four years old. She gave me an empty Band-Aid box, the tin kind with a snapping lid. She taught me to keep my tithing pennies in it and then take it to the bishop. I am eternally grateful for her, for that Band-Aid box, and for the blessings that have come from paying tithing.

Randall L. Ridd
(56) A young man decides to serve a mission rather than get married after he gains a glimpse of who he was in the premortal world.

My brother Henry and I were taking care of our neighbors’ pet chinchilla while they were away on vacation. We liked to feed him raisins and banana chips. One day while we were feeding him, he got out of his cage. We were having a hard time finding him. My brother finally found him under the couch, but every time we tried to grab him he ran away and hid again. I said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to help us catch the chinchilla. We worked together and finally caught him. I am grateful that I can ask Heavenly Father for help when I need it.Emmett Lytle, age 5, with help from his mom, Middlebury, Connecticut

I didn’t realize how much I depended on the Church until I read “Life in a Small Branch” in the October New Era. I recently moved to Walla Walla, Washington, from Ogden, Utah, and thought it was hard having only two wards and going to seminary before school instead of during school like in Utah. Then I read the story by Katherine England, and it made me realize how lucky I am to be able to go to seminary every day and have good LDS friends. It also thrills me to see missionaries in action. I’ve never been around full-time missionaries until I moved here, and in our ward there are two. I thought the article was a great testimony builder.
Jill WatkinsWalla Walla, Washington

Monica Ohene-Opare was baptized as an exchange student in New York in 1979. She married shortly after returning home and helped convert her husband, Emmanuel. Each of them has since held a variety of Church callings. Currently, she is president of the Primary in their ward, and he is president of the Accra Ghana Stake. But their most important leadership contributions may have been in family life.
Sister Ohene-Opare knows that their five children have been blessed with an opportunity that was not available to her: they are among the first generation in Ghana to grow up in the gospel, “and it has become part of them.” She says she is grateful that they have its high standards to help them confront their challenges.

I have often held in my hand a black walnut. It has a shell like stone. It has many internal stony reinforcements. But in between is an unimpressive, unimportant-looking meaty substance that has a mysterious and tremendous power. If you plant this seed under certain circumstances, heat is produced inside.
Now, whether it is a seed, or a teacher, or a businessman, or a student, when we begin to heat inside, something begins to happen. Your leaders may put a lot of heat on you from the outside, but that doesn’t always do much good. The heat that does the greatest good is the heat that is generated on the inside. Success, like failure, is an “inside” job.
When this walnut begins to heat inside, it produces a mysterious power that breaks that stony shell as though it were paper, and a little shoot works its way up through the soil to become a great walnut tree. That is, there is some mysterious power inside of a walnut shell that has the ability to attract out of the soil and the air and the water all of the elements necessary to become a great walnut tree—including wood, and foliage, and blossoms, and fragrance, and fruit.

Now, with a wonderful and talented family of 11 children, Sister Groberg reflected on times Brother Groberg served as a Regional Representative of the Quorum of the Twelve to the Pacific Islands and was frequently gone great distances three weeks at a time. On one occasion a call from the prophet to Elder Groberg conveyed this message: “Tell your wife you won’t be gone over six months on this special assignment (it turned out to be only two months), but we’re not sure how long it will be.” Of these times she spoke tenderly: “When your husband is giving his all, it doesn’t separate you even while he is away. It really doesn’t separate you. You are a part of it with him,” she explained. “It was his letters,” she said. And she had already developed a deep appreciation for his sensitive writing. “He would write such inspiring letters. His letters to us as a family had a profound influence on everything we did. They always have been such a strengthening influence,” she emphasized. “He would share what he could of his experiences and then he would come home and the girls would look forward to their daddy coming back and telling them really special and inspiring things that had happened on his trip.”

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Openshaw then, now 30-year-old Jennifer Bowden, thought about where she wanted to be in 15 years when the time capsule was buried.

“I was hoping I’d be married and be a mom,” she says.

Check. Her husband sends her a smile from a nearby table as her children, Samuel and Emma, giggle on the Jeppsons’ swing set.

“I also knew I wanted an education,” she continues.

Double check. Jennifer has a master’s degree in dietetics from Utah State University.

What has stayed the same is her strong testimony of the gospel. She pauses thoughtfully to consider where the last 15 years have taken her. “If my younger self could see me, I think she’d be pleased,” she says.

A patriarchal blessing was once again the device used by the Lord in warning George Albert Smith. President Smith was only fourteen years of age when the patriarch placed his hands upon the young man’s head and pronounced this blessing:
“… thou shalt become a mighty prophet in the midst of the sons of Zion. And the angels of the Lord shall administer unto you, and the choice blessings of the heavens shall rest upon you …
“And thou shalt be wrapt in the visions of the heavens and thou shalt be clothed with salvation as with a garment, for thou are destined to become a mighty man before the Lord, for thou shalt become a mighty Apostle in the Church and kingdom of God upon the earth, for none of thy father’s family shall have more power with God than thou shalt have, for none shall exceed thee … and thou shalt become a man of mighty faith before the Lord, even like unto that of the brother of Jared [note the similarity to the promise made to Lorenzo Snow], and thou shall remain upon the earth until thou art satisfied with life, and shall be numbered with the Lord’s anointed and shall become a king and a priest unto the Most High. …”
This blessing takes on an added dimension when one is aware of President Smith’s ancestry. His father, John Henry Smith, was an apostle and counselor in the First Presidency to Joseph F. Smith; his grandfather, George A. Smith, was also an apostle and served in the First Presidency with President Brigham Young. His great-grandfather, John Smith, who was the brother of Joseph Smith, Sr., was the patriarch to the Church for several years until Hyrum Smith’s son grew to manhood. With this in mind, one part of the blessing becomes especially interesting: “… none of thy father’s family shall have more power with God than thou shalt have, for none shall exceed thee.” And note that this warning came to George Albert Smith when he was fourteen—the same age as Joseph Smith was when he received the First Vision.

A friend of mine once told me about his experience in coming to know and understand the gift of the Holy Ghost. He had prayed often and longed to know the truth of the gospel.
Although he felt at peace with his beliefs, he had never received the certain knowledge for which he hungered. He had reconciled himself to the fact that he might be one of those who would have to walk through this life relying upon the faith of others.
One morning, while pondering the scriptures, he felt something surge through his body from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. “I was immersed in a feeling of such intense love and pure joy,” he explained. “I cannot describe the measure of what I felt at that time other than to say I was enveloped in joy so profound there was no room in me for any other sensation.”
Even as he felt this outpouring of the Holy Ghost, he wondered if possibly he was just imagining what was happening. “The more I wondered,” he said, “the more intense the feelings became until it was all I could do to tearfully say, ‘It is enough.’”

A home teacher I know relates an experience that gave him a feeling of success that has since carried him through many difficult times: “I was working with a family that was reasonably active, but just didn’t seem to have enough commitment to living all of the gospel principles. I prayed to know what I should discuss with them that would be of most value at the time, and I felt inspired to talk about the principle of fasting. I found that they had been discussing this very principle among themselves, and I was able to answer some of their questions and give them some encouragement to use this principle. One of their children who had never fasted before committed to try fasting on the next fast Sunday, and afterward she beamed as she reported that it had been a wonderful experience.

“Just that one successful experience encouraged me and motivated me to try for other successes as a home teacher. And each subsequent success renewed my feelings that I was truly engaged in a worthwhile work. To this day, some of those early successes help to keep me motivated and inspired as a home teacher, and I truly enjoy that calling as a result.”

When I returned home from my mission, I also struggled with comparing myself to others.
Elder Uchtdorf addressed the dangers of comparison, saying: “We spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others[.] … This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does.”
I was too focused on what other returned missionaries were doing, which made me feel like I wasn’t progressing much at all. But asking Heavenly Father for help with changing my focus and actively striving to do so allowed me to worry less about what others were doing. Instead, I focused on my unique path and the steps I could take each day toward my spiritual and temporal goals.

In addition to the training, another highlight for the couples was being together as they attended the Accra Ghana Temple. Sister N’mah Williams, a senior missionary from Sierra Leone received her endowments while at the training and Elder and Sister Yacoubou senior missionaries serving in the Cotonou Benin Coordinating Council were blessed as they participated in a proxy sealing ordinance for Sister Yacoubou’s deceased parents.

When I was eleven, I received a special blessing from my uncle, a patriarch, whom I had never met. In the blessing, I was promised the very things I’d hoped for but had kept hidden in my heart—that I would have the home and family I had always dreamed about. The promises in that blessing have since been fulfilled. I have an absolute testimony of priesthood blessings, and I know that those who are worthy to give blessings are inspired by God.

We have testimonies from seminary students throughout the world. Listen to a page from a diary coming from Russia:
“Today is the happiest morning in this year; today is the first morning seminary day.
“How and when originate this thought about daily morning seminary. I remember there was a lesson from our CES teachers that mentioned about the daily seminary program in the United States and Europe and that got stuck in my mind. At that lesson I felt the power of the Holy Ghost, which brought a thought unto me that we should have seminary here. Then I felt that the Lord endows everything for this job: possibility, strength, and help. We have to have just willingness to accept such a gift.
“After that meeting I felt great inspiration. Some mothers got frightened a little with the idea because children will have to get up early in the morning and in school, they are overloaded, and some finish the school this year and will be entering higher educational institutions. But fathers who have priesthood completely supported me, having said that daily studying of the scriptures is so needed for youth, will teach them discipline, and also will help them gain the Holy Ghost, which during the daytime and school lessons will help to withstand the temptations of Satan” (comments from early-morning seminary teachers from Vyborg, Russia, fall 1996).