Gospel Story Finder

Keryn stuffed an extra pair of jeans into her suitcase, then squeezed it shut.
“There!” she said to herself.
She had been looking forward to the school trip for months. Her class would be at camp for two days, living like pioneers—making candles, cooking over fires, even helping to build a log cabin.
Keryn glanced around the room, trying to spot anything she had missed. Her toothbrush was packed. She had clean clothes and an extra pair of shoes—oh, she’d better grab her old sweatshirt.
As she picked up her sweatshirt off the floor, her eyes fell on her scriptures on the table by the bed, and she froze.
Each member of her family had agreed to read the Book of Mormon daily, and so far Keryn hadn’t missed a night. But how was she supposed to read it in a cabin full of girls from school? With a sigh, she unlatched her suitcase, stuffed her scriptures between T-shirts and jeans, and sat on the suitcase to close it. Maybe she could find some quiet time to go off by herself and read.
“C’mon, Keryn. Race you to the campfire!” Sarah took off, and Keryn ran to catch up.
The day had been fun and very busy. Keryn had chopped at a log to help build the cabin, dunked candlewicks into wax over and over, carved a whale out of soap, and swum in the lake.
The fun carried on through the campfire time of singing songs and listening to a storyteller. Finally, Keryn, Sarah, and two of their cabinmates marched through the darkness to the cabin arm in arm, singing loudly.
The girls flopped onto their bunk beds, told stories, and laughed about the day. Then one by one they began to get ready for bed.
Keryn brushed her teeth, then climbed onto her top bunk and listened to the others. She had decided to leave her scriptures in the suitcase, but she just didn’t feel right. Then these words came into her mind: “Read them. You know you need to read them.”
Reluctantly, Keryn climbed out of bed and pulled her scriptures out of her suitcase. Then she climbed back up and tried to open the Book of Mormon without being noticed.
No such luck. She had just found her place in Mosiah when Sarah poked her head over the edge of the bunk. “What are you reading?” she asked.
“OK,” Keryn told herself, “it’s time to be a missionary.”
“It’s a book like the Bible, and it’s called the Book of Mormon,” she said aloud.
Sarah climbed up on the bunk with her. “What’s it about?”
Carol and Tasha gathered around, too.
Keryn sat up. “Well, right now I’m in a part called Mosiah, and a prophet named Abinadi is preaching the gospel to the wicked king and his priests. He’s telling them about the Ten Commandments and all the things they should already know. But they’re doing evil things instead.” She scooted over so Tasha could climb up.
“What happens to them?” Tasha asked.
“Well, later Abinadi won’t deny God, so the king has him killed.”
“What?” exclaimed Sarah. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it’s really sad,” Keryn agreed. “But Alma, one of the king’s priests, really listens to Abinadi. He ends up teaching the gospel to lots of people.”
“That’s awesome,” Tasha said. “I read my Bible most days, but I didn’t bring it here.” Then she flipped onto her stomach and reached down to the bottom bunk. “Hey, Carol, did you see me jump in the lake?”
Keryn smiled as the conversation turned back to the day’s events. She was glad she hadn’t left her scriptures in her suitcase, glad her friends didn’t make fun of her, and glad she had a chance to tell them about the Book of Mormon.
She looked at Sarah, Carol, and Tasha, now talking about their craft projects, then turned back to her book and continued reading about Abinadi and King Noah.

Later this month we shall dedicate a beautiful new building on the Brigham Young University campus to the memory of a woman, Caroline Hemenway Harman. You probably have never heard of her. I would like to tell you briefly her story.
At the age of twenty-two Caroline married George Harman. They had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Then, at the age of thirty-nine, her husband passed away and she was left a widow.
Her sister, Grace, had married her husband’s brother, David. In 1919, during the terrible influenza epidemic, David was seriously stricken, and then his wife, Grace, became ill. Caroline cared for them and their children as well as her own. In the midst of these afflictions, Grace gave birth to a son, and then she died within a few hours. Caroline took the tiny infant to her own home and there nurtured it and saved the child’s life. Three weeks later her own daughter, Annie, passed away.
By now Caroline had lost two of her own children, her husband, and her sister. The strain was too much. She collapsed. She came out of that collapse with a serious case of diabetes. But she did not slow down. She continued to care for her sister’s baby; and her brother-in-law, the child’s father, came each day to see the little boy. David Harman and Caroline were later married, and there were now thirteen children in their home.
Then five years later David suffered a catastrophe that tried to the very depths those who agonized with him. On one occasion he used a strong disinfectant in preparing seed for planting. This got on his body, and the effects were disastrous. The skin and flesh sloughed off his bones. His tongue and teeth dropped out. The caustic solution literally ate him alive.
Caroline nursed him in this terrible illness, and when he died she was left with five of her own and eight of her sister’s children, and a farm of 280 acres where she and the children plowed, sowed, irrigated, and harvested to bring in enough to provide for their needs. At this time she also was Relief Society president, a position she held for eighteen years.
While caring for her large family and in extending the hand of charity to others, she would bake eight loaves of bread a day and wash forty loads of clothes a week. She canned fruits and vegetables by the ton, and cared for a thousand laying hens to provide a little cash. Self-reliance was her standard. Idleness she regarded as sin. She cared for her own and reached out to others in a spirit of kindness that would permit no one of whom she was aware to go hungry, unclothed, or cold.
She later married Eugene Robison, who, not long afterward, suffered a stroke. For five years until his death she nursed him and cared for him in all his needs.
Finally, exhausted, her body racked by the effects of diabetes, she passed away at the age of sixty-seven. The habits of industry and hard work which she instilled in her children rewarded their efforts through the years. Her sister’s tiny baby, whom she nurtured from the hour of his birth, together with his brothers and sisters, all acting out of a sense of love and gratitude, have given to the university a substantial bequest to make possible the beautiful building which will carry her name.

When my grandmother was about 19 years old, she developed a disease that caused her to be very ill. She later said, “I couldn’t walk. My left foot was all out of shape after I had been in bed for several months. The bones were soft like a sponge, and when I touched my foot to the floor it felt like an electric shock.” While she was confined to bed and at the height of her suffering, she obtained and studied pamphlets from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was converted and later baptized. Many times a particular challenge helps prepare us for something vitally important.

“I think the Lord has a special purpose for us, and that’s why we are growing so fast,” says President Soulé. “We have learned that when we obey, the Lord will tell us what to do. We feel his love, and we will do his will.
Once I was at a business meeting, and I didn’t drink. One of our potential clients said, ‘If you don’t drink, we won’t do business with you.’ I thought a minute, and then I said to him, ‘Maybe I don’t want to do business with someone who thinks that what is in my glass is more important than what I can do.’ I thought he was angry, but the next day he called me and said they wanted to do business only with me because I wasn’t afraid to stand up for what I believed. When we know what is right, we should do it, no matter what.”

When I was a very small boy, my father found a lamb all alone in the desert. The herd of sheep to which its mother belonged had moved on, and somehow the lamb got separated from its mother, and the shepherd must not have known that it was lost. Because it could not survive alone in the desert, my father picked it up and brought it home. To have left the lamb there would have meant certain death, either by falling prey to the coyotes or by starvation because it was so young that it still needed milk. My father gave the lamb to me and I became its shepherd.
For several weeks I warmed cow’s milk in a baby’s bottle and fed the lamb. We became fast friends. I named him Nigh—why I don’t remember. It began to grow. My lamb and I would play on the lawn. Sometimes we would lie together on the grass and I would lay my head on its soft, woolly side and look up at the blue sky and the white billowing clouds. I did not lock my lamb up during the day. It would not run away. It soon learned to eat grass. I could call my lamb from anywhere in the yard by just imitating as best I could the bleating sound of a sheep.
One night there came a terrible storm. I forgot to put my lamb in the barn that night as I should have done. I went to bed. My little friend was frightened in the storm and I could hear it bleating. I knew that I should help my pet, but wanted to stay safe, warm, and dry in my bed. I didn’t get up as I should have done. The next morning I went out to find my lamb dead. A dog had also heard its bleating cry and killed it. My young heart was broken. I had not been a good shepherd or steward of that which my father had entrusted to me. My father said, “Son, couldn’t I trust you to take care of just one lamb?” My father’s remark hurt me more than losing my woolly friend. I resolved that day, as a little boy, that I would try never again to neglect my stewardship as a shepherd if I were ever placed in that position again.

On my street lives a little boy known as the Sidewalk King. This little boy cruises the neighborhood on his black and gold plastic racing tricycle, living in his own world of make-believe and heroic deeds. One of his favorite things to do is to back that little vehicle up against his house and then—gathering up all the power and energy at his command—shoot dangerously out onto the street. Then, pulling handlebars around hard, he pedals back again. Nearby neighbors can’t help but hear him.
His parents, understanding more than he does about the dangers involved, have warned him and pleaded with him. Not long ago, his father found it necessary to give his young son a strong chastising to help him understand how dangerous it is to ride out in the street. As he ran into the house he sobbed to his parents, “You just want to ruin all my fun.”
To the mind of a four-year-old, that is exactly what it appeared. But, oh, how wrong he was. His parents weren’t trying to ruin his fun; they were trying to keep him from harm, perhaps even death. Freedom to him was largely doing what he wanted without restraint and interference.
I know of another little boy who came home from school one day long ago to find a rented piano in the house. “What’s this piano here for?” he asked his mother.
“It’s for you,” she replied.
“For me?” he asked. “Why for me?”
“Because,” she said, “you are going to take piano lessons.”
He said he didn’t want to take piano lessons. But she had already arranged for a teacher.
Well, this little boy began to miss a few lessons. One day his mother asked, “How was your piano lesson?”
He said, “Fine. I’m doing pretty well.”
“That’s interesting,” she said. “I just talked to your teacher, and she hasn’t seen you for a while.” He had been caught. He didn’t know what the punishment would be, but he knew it would be bad. Then his mother said, “Just for that, you may not take piano lessons.”
He tried to look punished, but inside he was very happy with her decision. Mother, he thought, you have hit on the perfect punishment. I hope you use it often. Within his heart he felt that he had just been liberated. He was free from practice, free from lessons, free from discipline, routine, and regimentation—free from all that seemed to limit his freedom.
When he grew to be a man, he was sitting one day in a church meeting during which a woman was to sing a solo. When her time to perform came, she walked up to the podium and announced, “My accompanist could not come today. I need someone to accompany me.” Looking over the congregation, she saw a man who used to teach piano. “Will you accompany me?” she asked him. The man came forward, and she handed him the music.
As he watched this happen, my friend who had avoided music lessons thought, What would I have done if she had asked me? If she had asked me, I would have been free to do only one thing: to say no. Suddenly, he realized that what he had assumed to be one of the great liberating moments of his life—when his mother said, “You may not take lessons any more”—was in fact a moment of bondage, not freedom. As he sat in that church meeting, he might as well have been handcuffed, for he could not have played the piano if he had wanted to. The other man was free; he could choose to play or not to play. Ultimately, then, freedom is more a matter of capacity and ability than of permission.
Too often, we believe the myth that we are free to do whatever we want to do. True, most of us are free to develop any ability or skill we choose; but until we develop them, we remain in bondage to our own lack of capacity. Even in lands of great political freedom, I fear that many of us live in bondage. Misunderstanding the principle of freedom, we lead lives of limited capacity and, thus, diminished choice. We tell ourselves that the only mason we are not doing certain positive, productive things is that we don’t want to. If we don’t play the piano, for example, we like to think it’s because we don’t want to. Actually, we don’t play because we are not free to. Remember, if we are only free to choose one thing—that is, not to play—we are not really free.

I’d like to share with you two important lessons that I learned in my youth. When I was young, my friends and I often played ball in an alley behind our home. A woman named Mrs. Shinas rented a tiny house nearby, and she used to watch us play from her window. She rarely came out of her house, and when she did, she never smiled. We all thought that she was mean. She had a big dog, an English setter, and whenever one of our baseballs rolled in its direction—which happened often—Mrs. Shinas would send the dog to fetch it. We wouldn’t see the ball again. Soon we ran out of baseballs.

In those days, we didn’t have lawn sprinklers, and so each day I watered our lawn by hand with a hose. One day as I stood there watering our little stretch of grass, I noticed that Mrs. Shinas’s lawn looked a little shabby. It took only a few more minutes to water it, too, and soon I was watering her lawn each day.

When autumn came that year, one of my tasks was to clear our yard of leaves. I sprayed the ground with a hose, pushing the leaves into a pile with the force of the water. I decided to gather up the leaves on Mrs. Shinas’s yard as well, and as I was doing this one day, she came to her door and beckoned for me to come inside. I turned off the hose and went into her house.

She invited me to sit in her living room, and she gave me a cookie and a glass of milk. As I sat there eating my cookie, she showed me her collection of little china dogs. I could tell that they were her most prized possession. Then she thanked me for taking care of her lawn. It was the first conversation I had ever had with her.

Mrs. Shinas then went into her kitchen and returned with a box. In it were all the baseballs that her dog had taken. She handed me the box, said thank you—and smiled! It was the first time I’d ever seen her smile.

I had always believed that Church callings come from our Heavenly Father and that they help us progress spiritually. But I really didn’t have a testimony of this until I had a special experience several years ago.
I had just spent a year in Utah as a high school exchange student. After I returned to Japan, I received my first calling in the Church—president of our Mia Maid class. In a letter to my host family in Utah, I wrote about my calling.
A couple of weeks later I received a letter from my host “father.” He wrote:
“I didn’t tell you then, but one month before you left for home, our bishop told me, ‘We want to assign Kazuko to be class president of the Mia Maids. How long will she be here?’
“I told him that you would be leaving the following month. So they didn’t give you the calling.”
I found it remarkable that the same calling the bishop in Utah had been inspired to extend to me was given me when I came back to Japan. It made me realize that God knows about me no matter where I am—in Utah or Japan or anyplace else. I believe he knew that particular calling was what I needed then in order to grow.
I have received various callings since then. When I look back on them, I am amazed to find that each calling was somehow necessary at that time in my life to strengthen a weakness.
I have learned to accept any calling that comes to me, even if it seems difficult. I know that it comes from Heavenly Father, who knows me.

Jenny jumped out of bed to the good smells of breakfast cooking. Mother must be feeling much better, she thought as she bounced down the stairs.
The January winds had carved a snowbank near the window, and as Jenny looked out, the lacy patterns of snowflakes appeared in the light of the kitchen. Mother greeted her with a cheery smile, and Jenny’s rosy-cheeked little brother sat in his high chair, demanding his cereal. Everything is back to normal, thought Jenny contentedly.
It had been a difficult December for the family. First, Jenny was down with the flu, then her little brother Clark, then Daddy, then the baby. Mother cared for all of them until one day she, too, was sick. Daddy took over, but he wasn’t feeling his best yet, either. So the holidays were almost forgotten. On Christmas Day there were some gifts from Santa and relatives, but the usual family gatherings and church parties passed while the family tried to get well.
Now the holidays were over, and today was the first day back to school after vacation. Jenny was eager to see her friends and teacher again.
As Clark came down the stairs, rubbing sleep from his eyes, Mother grew thoughtful. The happy expression on her face gradually changed, and she appeared sad. “What’s the matter, Mother?” asked Jenny as she ate her warm oatmeal with honey.
“Oh, I’m grateful that we’re all better now, that Daddy has returned to his job, and that you can go back to school, but I feel sad that the holidays passed us by.”
“You mean because we didn’t get a lot of presents this year?” asked Jenny.
“Not that, sweetheart,” Mother said. “I mean we didn’t give a lot of presents. Oh, we remembered our family, but we missed our special visits to our good neighbors—dear Sister Ruth, Mrs. Perkins, and Brother Billings down the road. I hope they had a nice holiday.”
Just then Jenny saw the school bus rounding the curve in the road. She quickly gathered her things, and ran to the door. “ ’Bye, Mother. I love you,” she yelled as she started for the bus, her boots making deep tracks in the snow.
At school Jenny kept busy at her assignments. Her teacher’s happy face reminded her of Mother, and Jenny remembered what Mother had said about the holidays passing them by. She kept thinking about it, even when she was playing with her friends at recess.
On the long ride home in the school bus, while Jenny gazed at rolling mounds of white that covered the farm and fields, Mother’s words were still on her mind. Then she thought, Why do we give Christmas gifts just in December? We could have our own Christmas in January! She was so excited at the idea that she could hardly wait to get home.
As she ran up the lane, Jenny could see Mother outside sweeping snow off their front steps. “Merry Christmas, Mother!” Jenny cried as she ran to greet her.
“What do you mean?” laughed Mother.
“I have the answer, Mother. We don’t have to miss the holidays, after all. We can have Christmas in January.”
Mother’s face brightened. Jenny could tell that she liked the idea.
When they went inside, Jenny smelled hot bread just out of the oven. As Mother gave her a big slice, Jenny said, “We could take something like this to give to Sister Ruth, Mrs. Perkins, and Brother Billings, just to show them we love them. You always say that we should keep Christmas in our hearts all year round.”
“You’re right,” said Mother, “but not just bread.” Her eyes twinkled as she went to the freezer and brought back a can of frozen orange juice.
Jenny was surprised. “We’re going to give them bread and orange juice?”
“Not orange juice,” Mother said. “Orange-Juice Jelly. At least, that’s its name. But we can call it January Jelly, OK?”
“OK!”
With Mother directing, Jenny added two cups of water to one box of pectin and stirred it in a pan. Mother put it on the stove, and when it had boiled for one minute, she added three and a half cups of sugar. She helped Jenny add three-fourth cup of frozen orange juice concentrate, and they let it simmer for two minutes.
In no time at all they were pouring the golden liquid into jars. As the sealing wax hardened, mother cut a piece of red ribbon to wrap around the top of each jar.
When Daddy came home, they bundled the boys up, stacked their gifts on the family sled, and started out.
As the family walked along with Daddy carrying the baby and Jenny pulling the sled, Mother began singing softly, “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful.” Jenny felt as if she would burst with joy. She knew that Mrs. Perkins, Brother Billings, and Sister Ruth would be happy to see them and would love the bread and January Jelly, and she couldn’t wait to surprise them.

In her lifetime, Emmeline met and talked with six presidents of the United States. She spoke with two of these presidents in the White House on behalf of the Church. She hoped to lighten legislation against Latter-day Saints.

In January 1879, Emmeline and Zina Young Williams presented a message to members of Congress and to President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife. Emmeline and Zina spoke against bills aimed to punish Church members in the Utah Territory for their religious beliefs. They also asked for consideration of wives and children who would be harmed by measures to send men to prison for participating in plural marriage.9 Emmeline wrote, “I thank God I was the first to represent our women in the Halls of Congress.”10

Seven years later, Emmeline traveled to Washington, DC, USA, with a similar purpose. She met with congressmen and senators. She talked with Rose Cleveland (the president’s sister and Acting First Lady) and then spoke with President Grover Cleveland himself. Emmeline and Dr. Ellen Ferguson represented the Latter-day Saint women of the Utah Territory and presented him a memorial plea urging fairness for the Saints in political matters.11

In these efforts, Emmeline was supported by leaders of the National Woman Suffrage Association, particularly by Susan B. Anthony, who greeted her warmly whenever they met and emphasized their common interest in improving the lives of women.12

When Hal was 13, his father took a significant position at the University of Utah. The younger Henry attended early-morning seminary and took some enjoyment in playing on his high school’s basketball team, but by his own admission never made any close personal friends.
While feeling sorry for himself one day, he received an impression that would change his life. He felt it was a warning from God: “Someday, when you know who you really are, you will be sorry you didn’t use your time better.” He responded to that prompting by reading the Book of Mormon several times as a teenager. He also felt guided by President David O. McKay’s book Gospel Ideals, which, among other things, taught him how to properly treat women, a devotion he would show all of his life to his beloved wife, Kathleen.
Since early childhood, Hal’s deepest dreams were to be married and form a family. He thought about his future children so often that he’d already given them the collective nickname “The Redheads,” imagining them with red hair like his mother’s.
This dream finally moved toward fruition during his service as a counselor in the Boston District presidency, a Church calling Hal had while he was pursuing his graduate work at Harvard University following his undergraduate studies at the University of Utah. As a doctoral student in the summer of 1960, Hal represented the district presidency at a single-adult devotional held at the Cathedral of the Pines in southwest New Hampshire, USA, a natural outdoor amphitheater of note in the region. At the event he saw a young woman in a red and white dress and was impressed by the pure goodness she radiated. He thought, “That’s the best person I’ve ever seen. If I could be with her for the rest of my life, I could be every good thing I ever wanted to be.”
The young woman was Kathleen Johnson from Palo Alto, California, USA, who hadn’t intended to be in New England that summer but, at the insistence of her friend, had attended summer school with her at Harvard. Following that outdoor devotional, Hal arranged to meet Kathy at church one Sunday and was happy to hear she enjoyed playing tennis. Hal had been playing tennis several times a week with a college friend and was a good natural athlete, so he assumed a game of tennis would be an ideal first date and a way for him to make a terrific impression. What Kathleen didn’t tell him was that she had been the captain of her high school tennis team! “She cleaned me out,” Hal still grumbles about the match. This was the first of his future wife’s remarkable examples of living humbly and then helping her husband to do so.
Following their marriage and Hal’s eventual appointment to the faculty of the business school at Stanford University, late one night in December 1970, just a few months before Hal was released as the bishop of the student ward in Palo Alto, Kathy asked a question seemingly out of the blue. As Hal climbed into bed after a demanding day, she leaned over and asked, “Are you sure you’re doing what you ought to be doing with your career?”
Her question caught him by surprise. Everything in their life seemed perfect. The future seemed bright and clear, even down to the Eyring dream home that Hal had recently outlined in his journal. It would include such niceties as “a room for projects, large enough and rough enough to work on and store a kayak,” along with “at least five electrical outlets by the kitchen table” and “a shed or bathhouse retreat for writing.”
“What do you mean?” Hal asked his wife.
“Couldn’t you do studies for Neal Maxwell?” she suggested, referring to the Church’s new Commissioner of Education. At this, Hal was truly dumbfounded. He had only met Neal A. Maxwell once, and he knew that Kathleen had never met him at all. He tried to describe to her why such a career shift would not be a good fit for him, yet she insisted he at least pray over the matter. This he did immediately, dropping to kneel by the bed and offering a short prayer. When no answer came, Hal felt the matter decided and soon went to sleep.
The following morning, however, Hal received two distinct spiritual impressions that would forever alter the course of his career and his life. He captured both in his journal. First, “Don’t use your human judgment to eliminate opportunities presented to you: pray about them all with an open mind.” And second, “Do the tasks you are assigned in the Church and your profession as well as you can; they are preparation.”
The first impression came as something of a rebuke that Hal would forever thereafter live by. After having previously rejected three different job offers without praying over them, into his mind came the words, “Don’t you ever make that mistake again. You don’t know which end is up in your career.”
With this spiritual direction fresh in his mind, Hal was prepared when less than three weeks later, Commissioner Maxwell called to schedule a meeting with him in Salt Lake City. Brother Maxwell got right to the point. “I’d like to ask you to be the president of Ricks College,” he said. Hal replied that he would have to pray about it. He did and the terse answer he received was, “It’s my school.” The rest, as they say, is history. His service in the Church since then has been as exemplary as it has been conspicuous, moving on to serve as Deputy Commissioner of Education and then Commissioner (twice), followed by calls to the Presiding Bishopric, the Quorum of the Seventy, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and as a counselor to three Presidents of the Church.
Photograph with President Hinckley from Deseret News
But in a very real sense to Hal, no calling in the Church was more important for him than another: “The pressures at every stage of life can tempt us to reject or neglect calls to serve the Savior,” President Eyring has taught. “Some of those calls may seem unimportant, but my life, and my family, was changed for the better by my accepting a call to teach a deacons quorum. I felt the love of those deacons for the Savior and His love for them.”2

“ATTACK!”
The shout shocked Jeffrey as he sat reading the Book of Mormon at his bedroom desk. He didn’t move as thundering feet barreled closer.
Suddenly, the door was flung open and two boys wielding plastic swords and wearing eye patches burst in.
“Play with us or surrender, me hearty!” Jeffrey’s youngest brother, Benjamin, yelled.
Jeffrey rolled his eyes and half-smiled. “Reading scriptures around here is hard,” he thought.
Jeffrey had been trying hard to read his scriptures and pray every morning, even though there were plenty of distractions. Reading and praying made him feel like he had a little extra help being ready to make good choices.
After reading, Jeffrey sat down with his brothers to watch a cartoon. When the cartoon ended, another one started. Jeffrey felt like he should do something else, so he turned off the TV and started to play cars with his little brothers.
Dad walked into the room. “OK, guys, time to turn off the …”
“I already turned it off, Dad,” Jeffrey said.
“You did? Why?”
“I just thought it would be better to do something else,” Jeffrey said.
“Good thinking,” Dad said. “Now come on. Mom’s going to take you to school.”
When lunchtime came, Jeffrey sat with his friends. Mrs. Lewis turned on a CD for the students to listen to as they ate.
Jeffrey liked the first couple of songs. When the third song started playing, he recognized it as the same song Mom turned off when it came on the radio a couple of days earlier. Mom said the song’s message wasn’t good. Jeffrey understood, but he still liked the beat of the music.
Now, Mom wasn’t here. Everyone else seemed to like the song—even the teachers. But Jeffrey didn’t feel right as the music played. He walked toward Mrs. Lewis.
“Can you please change the song?” Jeffrey asked.
Mrs. Lewis tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow.
“Why?” she asked.
“This just isn’t a song I feel good listening to,” he answered.
“OK,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders and pushed the “skip” button.
Jeffrey immediately felt better.
After school, Jeffrey asked Mom if he could have some computer time.
“Yes,” Mom said. “But just until Dad gets home.”
Jeffrey sat at the computer as Mom cleaned nearby. He typed the address for a new website a friend had told him about. Benjamin sat next to him. The site had a lot of different games on it. Jeffrey clicked on a game and started to play.
Then he started to feel the way he did when the song came on earlier at school.
Jeffrey started to pay more attention to the game. Some things weren’t so good. The music definitely didn’t make him feel happy.
Jeffrey moved the mouse to the top of the page and clicked the red “X” to close it. He noticed he started to feel better again.
When Jeffrey knelt to pray that evening, he knew he had made good choices. The Holy Ghost guided his thoughts and feelings. Heavenly Father was helping him.
Jeffrey closed his eyes, knowing that the next day would bring many of the same situations, but also knowing that as long as he continued to read his scriptures and pray for help, he could be ready to make good choices.
Of course, he still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about those pirates.

The world is grappling with an invisible enemy which has led so many countries to lock down and regular life seems to have ground to a halt. Ghana is no exception, as I found myself in one of the lockdown areas with school activities suspended.
Amidst all this turmoil, it is very astonishing to see how leaders and members of the Church are doing all they can to keep to their covenants and to continually trust in the Lord. Friday evenings happen to be when we meet as young single adults for the eternal marriage class. Due to the threat posed by COVID-19, and the directive to stay at home, our gathering as a class seemed impossible in this difficult time. With the continual inspirations from the Lord, the instructors resorted to the use of online platforms like Zoom and WhatsApp for us to continually study and interact with each other.
In one of our classes, we discussed the topic of money and marriage. A lot of insights and experiences were shared on the platform to help us continue to know what the Lord wanted us to do. I felt this great peace of mind and I realized in a very subtle feeling that indeed God loves us and will continue to direct us towards the right paths no matter what the challenges may be. The discussion that evening was the only thing that ran through my mind that day until I went to sleep.
I realized from this experience that regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can continually do what we know to be right, share our testimonies to the people we can reach out to, and be a light that signals hope in the lives of people.
The world may be in despair, lives may be at a standstill, our faith may be challenged and pushed to the core, but one thing I know and believe in is that the redeeming and merciful alms of the Lord are not far from us and He will succor us in this time as He did for those in times past.

While I was serving my first mission to Mexico and Central America, my companion and I received a very interesting final assignment from our mission president. He asked us to leave the mission home and go down to Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, where some months before missionaries had been withdrawn due to religious and political persecution. Their lives had been threatened by mobs. A few converts had been baptized, but a real organization of the Church had not been established. As a result, these new members had been left alone, and for months the mission president heard little about how things were going.

We were given a list of names and asked by the mission president to go there, find the people, see how they were doing, and, if possible, locate a place where we could quietly conduct a sacrament meeting. For all those months, they had not had the privilege we take so much for granted of partaking of the sacrament each week.

We arrived early in the morning and immediately searched for the address of the first name on the list. We located her address and passed through a door in a high adobe wall that surrounded a crowded cluster of tiny huts around a central area where there was a common water source.

It seemed that all eyes were upon us. Back in the corner in the least prestigious part of the area was a little grass-thatched hut with a dirt floor. This sister came to the door, saw us, and easily recognized by our dress that we were missionaries. With tears in her eyes, she rushed to us and greeted us with a hug. We identified ourselves and the purpose of our assignment from the mission president.

After this brief exchange, she went back into her hut and brought out a clay jar into which she put her hand and withdrew some pesos and centavos she had been saving for months. Even though she had been alone without any Church organization, she had been saving her tithing with faith and hope that someday her tithing would be taken to the appropriate place.

She stood there in the poorest of clothing, bare feet, holding an infant child. She obviously had many unmet needs; yet, she was handing us money. My first impression was not to accept it and to encourage her to spend it wherever she might need it. Then I realized that was not my prerogative because she was obeying a commandment. She had gained a testimony that tithing is a divine commandment and was willing to live that principle—even when she was alone.

A friend of mine had planned on going on a mission but was having doubts. I shared with him my feelings about missions, the great importance of them. I then bore my testimony of my great love for the gospel and for Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. It must have made my friend think. He is now planning for his mission. He has already submitted his papers.
My advice to you is to wait for the right moment to discuss this with him. If you’re afraid of being too pushy, take it one step at a time. If you don’t know the right things to say, ask Heavenly Father to help you.
Kaylene Miller, 15Magna, Utah

When I was a young man, before I was even ordained a deacon, I went to one of our ward meetings, and two missionaries reported their missions in the Southern States. When I left that meeting, I felt like I could have walked to any mission field in the world, if I just had a call.
And I went home, went into my bedroom, and got down on my knees, and I asked the Lord to help me to live worthy so that when I was old enough I could go on a mission. And when the train finally left the station in Salt Lake and I was headed for the land of Holland, the last thing I said to my loved ones was, “This is the happiest day of my life.”

My mother also taught me to be honest, even if it meant doing hard things. Our neighbor grew all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Sometimes his fruit would grow on our side of the fence. Once I picked some of this fruit and took it to my mom. She looked at me and said, “That doesn’t belong to us.”
I couldn’t believe it. I said, “What do you mean? It’s on our side of our fence!” Again she said, “That doesn’t belong to us.” Then she took my hand, and we walked to our neighbor’s house. We asked for forgiveness for taking his fruit. My mother said that if we wanted something, we needed to get it honestly.

A Journey of Hope and Healing
A husband and wife share how pornography affected them and how they are addressing it:
Giving This Burden to the Lord
After 13 years of my husband struggling with pornography, I felt my hope drifting away. I was tired of the pain, the mistrust. I felt that my prayers weren’t being answered after years of praying for him to overcome this addiction and my heart to heal. In this moment of near hopelessness, I found myself on my knees, pleading with the Lord to help me turn it over to Him. This was a spiritually defining moment for me. Almost instantly, when I finished my prayer, I felt lighter. I had finally given this burden to the Lord. My hope was renewed. The key for me to move forward was when I realized that it wasn’t my job to fix my husband or carry the weight of his addiction. I was able to finally embrace the enabling power of the Atonement of Christ and allow Him to heal me.

“Dad, I don’t want to go,” Spencer said.
“You promised Grandpa you would help him today,” Dad said.
“I don’t want to go to the dump,” Spencer said. “Why doesn’t Grandpa put his garbage can on the curb like everyone else?”
“You promised you would go, so you need to go,” Dad said.
“This is silly,” Spencer thought. Why did he have to waste a day of his vacation at the dump?
A few minutes later, Grandpa drove up in his pickup truck. Two garbage cans were loaded in the back. Spencer climbed into the passenger’s seat.
“We have just a few stops to make before we go to the dump,” Grandpa said.
“This is going to take forever,” Spencer thought as he stared out the window.
Grandpa pulled into his neighbors’ driveway. The couple who lived there had been his grandparents’ neighbors for almost 50 years. Arlo and Wanda were always nice to Spencer when he came to visit. The front door opened and Wanda walked out.
“I wish you wouldn’t trouble yourself with this,” she said to Grandpa as he hauled her garbage can into the truck.
“No trouble at all,” Grandpa said.
“You have the kindest grandpa in the world,” Wanda said to Spencer.
“Give Arlo my best,” Grandpa said.
“I will. Thank you,” Wanda said. A tear fell down her cheek.
“What’s wrong with Arlo?” Spencer asked as they drove away.
“He’s really sick. Wanda has to do everything for him now. It’s a lot of hard work, but she doesn’t complain.”
A few minutes later they pulled into another driveway. A small woman was struggling to keep a garbage can from tipping over as she tried to move it from the garage.
“Minnie!” Grandpa jumped out of the truck. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just trying to help,” she said.
Minnie was another one of Grandpa’s neighbors. Grandpa took the garbage can from her.
“I think you’ve grown a foot since last summer, Spencer,” Minnie said, smiling at Spencer. “I’m sorry I haven’t brought over any waffles, but these old hands don’t do much cooking anymore.”
Minnie was an excellent cook and used to bring over a batch of waffles when Spencer and his family came to visit Grandma and Grandpa.
“That’s OK, Minnie,” Spencer said.
“I don’t know what I would do without your grandpa and grandma, Spencer,” Minnie said. “This world needs more people like them.”
Grandpa loaded Minnie’s can into the back of the truck, and soon they were driving down a long, dusty road outside of town. “This is our last stop,” Grandpa said.
“Who lives here?” Spencer asked.
“A new family that moved in a few months ago. They are having a hard time. I told them I would haul their trash for them so they wouldn’t have to pay for garbage service. At first they told me I didn’t need to.”
“Then why do it?” Spencer asked.
Grandpa smiled at Spencer. “Because I can,” he said.
Spencer stared out the window, thinking about what Grandpa had just said. He realized that Grandpa didn’t help people because he had to do it. He helped people because that’s the kind of person he was.
Grandpa parked the truck, but before he could get out, Spencer said, “You stay in the truck, Grandpa. I’ll get these cans for you.”
Grandpa smiled and let Spencer do the work. Spencer hauled the garbage cans to the road and then climbed back into the truck.
“Now we can go to the dump,” Grandpa said.
As they drove away, Spencer thought about all the people Grandpa helped.
“I guess helping people isn’t silly after all,” Spencer said.
Grandpa smiled. “No,” he said. “It’s one of the most important things we can do.”

Music has helped Ryan reach out to others and set a good example. He teaches keyboard and composition classes in a special summer school program. One friend was very discouraged and turned to Ryan for advice. He told her to go home and tune the radio to a classical music station instead of the usual hard rock she listened to. “She followed my advice,” Ryan said. “The next day she thanked me and said she didn’t feel one bit discouraged.”