Gospel Story Finder

I have reflected on how the economic challenges associated with the Great Depression in the 1930s led to an unfortunate turn for my parents and our family. My father became so involved in saving his automobile dealership and supporting a family during this difficult period that for a time my parents did not attend church.
Although we did not attend church services as a family, that did not prevent me from attending occasionally with my friends.
In those days, going on a mission was in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t something I talked about with my parents.
While attending college, several friends and I decided to serve missions. Visiting with my bishop, I filled out my missionary application while my parents were out of town. When my parents returned, I surprised them with the news that I had been called to serve in Great Britain. I am grateful for their enthusiastic support of this decision and for good friends who helped me decide to serve.
My missionary service prepared me to be a better husband and father and to be successful in business. It also prepared me for a lifetime of service to the Lord in His Church.
In the April 1985 general conference, I was assigned to speak in the priesthood session. I directed my remarks to the young men. I spoke about preparing to serve as a missionary. I said, “Of all the training I have received in my Church assignments, none has been more important to me than the training I received as a nineteen-year-old elder serving a full-time mission.”
The Lord knows you. When you are serving your mission, you will have experiences that will help you come to know Him better. You will grow spiritually in serving Him. In His name, you will be sent on errands to serve others. He will give you experiences with promptings from the Holy Ghost. The Lord will authorize you to teach in His name. You can show Him that He can trust you and can rely on you.
Just over five months ago, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and Elder Quentin L. Cook, who had also served as missionaries in the British Isles, joined me in visiting with members and missionaries in that beautiful land. While there, I reflected on my experiences as a young missionary. I testify that my mission is where I came to know that my Heavenly Father and my Savior, Jesus Christ, know and love me.
I was blessed to have two wonderful mission presidents, Selvoy J. Boyer and Stayner Richards, along with their dedicated companions, Gladys Boyer and Jane Richards. Looking back, I can see even more clearly that they trusted me and loved me. They taught me the gospel. They expected a lot from me. They gave me many challenging assignments and leadership responsibilities to help me to grow and prepare for a life of service.
I have also reflected on being called by President Spencer W. Kimball to preside over the Canada Toronto Mission with my dear wife, Barbara, and our children at our sides. President Kimball called us to serve in April 1974, shortly after he gave his inspired missionary message titled “When the World Will Be Converted.” In that message President Kimball explained his vision for how the gospel would be taken to all the world. He called for many more missionaries from around the world. He reminded us of the Lord’s expectation “that every man should … lift a warning voice unto the inhabitants of the earth.” President Kimball’s teaching about the expectation for young men to serve a mission became a topic of conversation in homes around the world. That expectation has not changed. I am grateful that President Russell M. Nelson also reaffirmed the Lord’s expectation this morning.
It has been almost 10 years since President Thomas S. Monson announced the lowering of the missionary age for young men and young women. In my view, a primary reason for this change was to give more of our youth the life-changing opportunity to serve as a missionary.
As an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, I now call upon you young men—and those young women who desire to serve a mission—to begin right now to talk with your parents about serving a mission. I also invite you to talk with your friends about serving a mission, and if one of your friends is not sure about serving, encourage them to talk with their bishop.
Commit to yourselves and to your Heavenly Father that you will serve a mission and that from this time forward you will strive to keep your hearts, hands, and minds clean and worthy. I invite you to gain a solid testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
Fathers and mothers of these wonderful youth, you have a vital role in this preparation process. Begin today to talk with your children about missionary service. We know that the family is the most profound influence in helping our young men and young women prepare.
If you are still in the age range for missionary service but have not served yet due to the pandemic or other reasons, I invite you to serve now. Talk to your bishop, and prepare to serve the Lord.
I encourage you bishops to help all young men and young women who are close to missionary age to prepare to serve, and I also encourage you bishops to identify those who are old enough but who have not yet served. Invite each young man to become a missionary, as well as each young woman who desires to serve.
To the missionaries currently serving, we thank you. Your mission has been during a worldwide pandemic. As a result, your mission experience has been unlike my mission experience or the experiences of any missionaries who served before 2020. I know it has not been easy. But even during these difficult times, the Lord has had a work for you to do, and you have done it wonderfully well. For example, you have used technology in new ways to find those who are ready to learn about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As you have served diligently and according to your abilities, I know that the Lord is pleased with your effort. I know that your service will bless your life.
When you are released from your mission, remember that you are not released from activity in the Church. Build upon the good habits you learned on your mission, continue to strengthen your testimony, work hard, pray, and be obedient to the Lord. Honor the covenants you have made. Continue to bless and serve others.
I pray that you young men and young women and your parents will see and know how missionary service will forever bless your life. May you know in your minds and feel in your hearts the power of the invitation the Lord gave to the great missionary sons of Mosiah. He said, “Go forth … and establish my word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples … in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls.”
May God bless the youth of the Church to desire to prepare and serve Him is my humble prayer, which I offer this morning in the sacred name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

One such dear friend of mine had limited experiences with God. But he longed to be with his departed wife. So he asked me to help him. I encouraged him to meet with our missionaries in order to understand the doctrine of Christ and learn of gospel covenants, ordinances, and blessings.
That he did. But he felt the course they advised would require him to make too many changes in his life. He said, “Those commandments and covenants are just too difficult for me. Also, I can’t possibly pay tithing, and I don’t have time to serve in the Church.” Then he asked me, “Once I die, please do the necessary temple work for my wife and me so that we can be together again.”
Thankfully, I am not this man’s judge. But I do question the efficacy of proxy temple work for a man who had the opportunity to be baptized in this life—to be ordained to the priesthood and receive temple blessings while here in mortality—but who made the conscious decision to reject that course.

Jessica also likes to read about recipes. She logs on to the Internet and types in the kind of food she wants to make and searches for recipes. She likes to bake cookies and cakes. She likes simple recipes the best—ones that don’t have too many ingredients. Jessica has already planned on baking her own chocolate birthday cake. She found a recipe that looks wonderful, with not too many ingredients.
Also on the Internet, Jessica found a recipe for gingersnaps. “It turned out that the recipe was 128 years old. It was created just after the Civil War. Don’t you think that’s interesting?” she asks.
The cookies tasted great, but Jessica couldn’t resist trying a little experiment. She used food coloring to make the cookies green. Then she put some orange food coloring in some granulated sugar and shook it, turning all the sugar bright orange. Then she sprinkled the orange sugar on the green cookies. “I took three cookies to school,” Jessica says, “but no one would try them except for the teacher.”

Helped by her daughter-in-law, Mary, Elizabeth had been compiling her personal history, but had been killed in a car accident before the work was done. Mary felt impressed to complete the work and make it available to the family.
Elizabeth’s history has greatly influenced her posterity. “Grandma is still a part of our lives,” says Carol, Mary’s daughter.
“When I see my grandchildren go to the bookshelf and take down that history,” says Mary, “I know why I felt so strongly compelled to finish it—so her posterity would know the legacy she left.”

Several years ago on a trip to Florida, I sat outside reading a book. Its title suggested that we can still make it to heaven, even though we’re not perfect now. A woman walking by asked, “Do you think it’s possible?”
I looked up, confused, and then realized she was talking about the book I was reading. I said something ridiculous like, “Well, I’m not that far into it, but I’ll let you know how it ends.”
Oh, how I wish I could travel back in time! I’d tell her, “Yes, it’s possible! Because heaven isn’t for people who’ve been perfect; it’s for people who’ve been forgiven, who choose Christ again and again.”

Three Christmas trees stand out in the memory of Elder Gary B. Sabin.
The first was a beautiful Christmas tree of his youth. When Gary scaled the tree trying to reach a candy cane, the entire tree crashed to the ground.
The second was an evergreen branch he found as a missionary while serving in Belgium and the Netherlands from 1973 to 1975. Elder Sabin and his companion took the branch home to their apartment and propped it up around the Christmas cards they had received from home.
The third was a tree made of Christmas lights strung on the IV stand next to his daughter’s hospital bed. One of three Sabin children to suffer from cystic fibrosis, his daughter had received a double-lung transplant one year after the death of her brother from the same disease.
“We have learned a lot more from our children than they have learned from us,” says Elder Sabin.
As a General Authority he will remember the Christmas trees and the lessons he learned from them. Each tree highlights portions of his journey—from a young boy wanting a candy cane to a missionary teaching the plan of salvation to a father who relied on the plan and the Savior’s love to sustain his family through mortal trials.

I have one other thought I should like to express. Brigham Young was a great defender of the Prophet Joseph Smith. There were Judases in the ranks in that day, just as there were in the Savior’s day, and just as we have today, some who are members of the Church who are undercutting us, who are betraying their trusts. We are shocked when we see the places from which some of these things come.
Brigham Young was invited by some of these men who were trying to depose the Prophet Joseph from his position as President of the Church; but they made a mistake by inviting President Brigham Young into their circle. And after he had listened to what their motives were, he said something to this effect: “I want to say something to you men. You cannot destroy the appointment of a prophet of God, but you can cut the thread that binds you to the prophet of God, and sink yourselves to hell.”
There was a pugilist there by the name of Jacob Bump, so the story goes, who doubled up his fists and started toward President Young, who replied to this man’s threats: “I would like to lay hands on a man like you in defense of the Prophet Joseph Smith.”
Remember that, brethren. You cannot destroy the appointments of the prophets of God. The Lord knows whom he wants to preside in his church, and sometimes it takes a lot of practicing, guiding, testing, before he may know whether or not one of us is prepared for the present assignment.

As I walked along the trail, prairie grass rippled in the breeze like gentle ocean waves. My cow turned aside to eat some grass that was dry and brown from the heat. “Get back here!” I called. “We can find you better grass than that.”
Although the wind was cool and pleasant, I was hot from carrying my four-year-old brother, James. He had the measles, and Mother, who was not feeling well, had tied him onto my back with her shawl. I could feel hard knots of muscle forming in the sore spots on my back, but I had no choice but to keep moving. The wagon train would pass us by if we stopped.
Our family cow started to wander off again, and I ran after her. Making sure she got enough to eat was an endless process. But we needed the milk, and I was determined to make it to Zion safe and sound even if I had to herd a cow and carry my little brother the whole way.
That night in camp I milked the cow and laid James down to sleep. I doubted that he would, but I was determined to get as much rest as I could before his sickly cries woke me. Unfortunately, I was nudged before I even had a chance to drift off to sleep. Father, still wearing his dusty trail clothes, was standing there with a concerned look on his face.
“Margaret, did you tie the cow to the wagon?” he asked.
Our cow was nowhere to be seen, and I soon found myself back on the prairie. We started out looking near camp, but there was no trace of her. I left the search group and walked over a small hill near the river. The air was full of the chirping of crickets and the rustle of wind in the grass. I was barefooted, but the evening was warm and the prairie dirt was hard and dry, so I didn’t mind.
Suddenly the ground turned soft beneath my feet—and moved! I froze, working up the courage to look down. When I did, I wished I hadn’t. I was standing in a bed of snakes! They slithered all about my feet, their scales glinting in the rising moon. I grew weak at the knees and almost fainted into the writhing mass, but I forced myself to stiffen. What should I do?
I decided to say a prayer. It was short, but definitely sincere. Immediately after saying “amen,” I jumped sideways. Heavenly Father must have blessed my leap, because I landed just clear of the snakes. I ran off a ways and collapsed.
I had barely caught my breath when I heard my father. “Margaret!” he called. I ran to the sound of his voice and threw my arms around him. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I smiled up at him, but I didn’t let go. “I’m fine now,” I said. I told him my story as he took me back to the wagons. I was so grateful to be safe that when I saw our cow I gave her a kiss on her disobedient nose.
We arrived safely in Utah on October 4, 1859, thanks to Heavenly Father’s watchful care. And, as always, the cow was by my side.

Thirty-six years ago I served a mission in southeast Mexico. At that time there were no stakes, with the largest cities in the mission having only two branches. There were limited opportunities for education and much poverty. With two or three exceptions, all the missionaries were from the United States.
I remember the people of the Nealtican Branch. All buildings in the town were made of adobe, except the Catholic cathedral and the LDS chapel. I remember standing in the small adobe house of the branch president. It had a dirt floor, windows with no glass, and a rug hanging over the entryway. There was no furniture in the house. His family had no shoes.
But they were a happy people. He told me that they had sold everything they had to buy bus tickets to the Mesa temple, where they were sealed for time and all eternity. Many of the branch members had done the same thing.

As a teenage boy I watched my six-week-old sister, Carol, struggle with whooping cough at a time when there were no antibiotics. I came home one night from having been a grease monkey [mechanic] at a bus depot and saw the light was on. It was about four o’clock in the morning. I knew it meant trouble. As I came in, Carol was laid out on the round dining room table, and Dad was waiting for a neighbor to come to join in blessing her. I thought she was gone. It seemed to me she had quit breathing. Then I watched the power of the priesthood, and I watched her start breathing again. That experience let me know the reality of the priesthood at a very young age. Our prayers for her were answered.

Some prayers are answered dramatically, as with Carol. With others we must wait. But if we do that, in those waiting moments there will come to us special things.

Grandma got steadily worse after that. Mom kept trying to get her to use the bedpan, but grandma insisted on her dignity. All those months that grandma lived with us, I would go into her room and talk to her after school. Her mind seemed to drift backward at times. She could remember her childhood better than what had happened only moments before. I tried not to notice her sagging skin hanging off her protruding bones. She weighed only 80 pounds.
Mom told me not to bother grandma anymore. She told me that grandma didn’t understand what I was saying anymore. Sometimes I’d rub grandma’s feet or stroke her forehead or we’d just be together.
My father was always too busy with work and my mom was pregnant with twins and half crazy with worry over my rebellious older brother and his motorcycle and girl friend. But grandma, she was always there.
It was nearly the end of the school year when I ran in the house one day and charged down the stairs to grandma’s room. A boy in my science class and I had been working on a science fair project for two months together. We’d taken first place, and he had asked me to the graduation dance. I wanted to tell grandma as I had everything else all year.
When I opened the door, flushed from running, the bedroom was empty. Grandma was gone.
“Where is she?” I shouted running up the stairs to the kitchen. “Where’s grandma?”
The house seemed strangely quiet. Most of my family were in the kitchen looking solemn.
“Mom had to take her to the hospital this morning,” my dad said, squeezing my arm. “She died this afternoon.”
“No!” I shouted, “She wasn’t ready yet!”
“It was her time, honey. It’s better this way. She won’t be suffering anymore. She’s happy now,” dad answered.
“She was happy before, too,” I said pulling away.
I ran out of the house and up the street to the field at the end. The tears stung as they ran down my hot cheeks. I climbed the tree. There, in the top branches, the wind felt cool on my burning face. With my eyes closed, I bit down on my bottom lip. I wanted it to hurt. The soft summer wind rustled the lacy leaves, and the slow tumbling water from the irrigation ditch lapped against the crooked, moss-covered roots of the willow tree. Time passed.
Later, I opened my eyes and looked up. I could see the gray silhouette of a bird slicing through the crimson sky overhead. Somehow I didn’t feel angry any more. I laid my cheek against the rough bark of the tree and put my arm around the limb. I felt comfortable and secure. The sun, round and orange, balanced on the mountain horizon. Cool, dark shadows rolled across the weed grass in the field.
Slowly, deliberately, I climbed limb by limb back down the tree to the ground. I took a deep breath of the summer-scented air. As I walked away from the tree, I felt as if an irreplaceable part of myself had stayed behind—there in that tree in the topmost branches. Yet I felt a new part of myself fill the gap and the longing as I realized that maybe, no matter how old we are, we’re never good and ready. Even knowing the glories of the other side doesn’t make it easier to let go of that which we know and love.
As I reached the end of the field near the street to my home, I turned around. The tree looked dark and hazy in the early evening light.

Even the herding of the sheep and the clipping of the wool was often done by the girls, particularly when they had no brothers or their brothers had other work to do. Many girls had some herding experience, and a few did all the herding. Minerva Stone herded her father’s little band of 15 or 20 sheep on the bench east of Ogden. Her work included feeding and raising the lambs whose mothers disowned them. In getting the sheep back to her home each evening, she often followed paths lined with cockleburs. She was barefooted.
“I would hesitate,” she wrote, “and wonder whether it be the least painful to run over the burrs or to walk slowly. Running would be more acute, but sooner ended, while walking slowly would prolong my misery. However my supply of shoe leather [the souls of her naked feet] was inexhaustible. As soon as one thickness would wear off, another would grow in its place.”

As rich as those blessings were, the reality of temple blessings became especially poignant in 2007. The morning of October 21, our twins, then 17, were in a car accident. Tessa sustained minor injuries, but Jenna’s condition was serious. She was taken to an area hospital, where she lay in a coma. When we learned she might not live, our three oldest children returned from college. As we spent the next days together in Jenna’s hospital room, our family took great comfort in the ordinances that will allow us to be together after death. We spent time talking about the eternal nature of families—of our family. A week after the accident, Jenna passed away.

Our temple covenants have become even more important to us since her death. We miss Jenna terribly and long for the day when we can be together again, but our faith in the plan of salvation and our testimony of eternal families sustain us. We display in our home a picture of our family at the temple, which reminds us of our experience and the promises we know can be ours.

President Tafadzwa Mahachi, who is serving as a branch president in the Zimbabwe Kadoma First Branch, and is also an author, publisher, graphic designer and a mathematics teacher shares how he overcame his mountain through faith: “I have discovered through interaction with both prospective and returned missionaries in Zimbabwe that there is a general fear of the unknown that keeps many from wanting to serve a mission. In reflection to President Nelson’s talk in which he spoke fervently about the need to replace our fears and doubts with faith, I could not help seeing the challenges of a returned missionary as a mountain that can only be moved through faith.
“After finishing my upper high school while living with my grandfather after the demise of my grandmother two years prior, grandfather passed. My father’s death followed exactly 21 days later. Given these circumstances, my future was no longer clear as all the supporting pillars were collapsing [before] my eyes. I could have doubted. I could have given up. But I give thanks to a supportive mission president who identified me among myriads of members who also needed his attention. He called me for an interview, and ministered to me so I could see the blessings of putting my faith into action. He realized that all my mission papers were ready and helped me to enter the mission field”.
President Mahachi served an honorable mission without knowing what awaited him upon his return. He placed his faith in the Lord.
When President Mahachi returned from his mission, he knew that his success depended on exercising faith with total integrity, despite all the opposition around him. He shares his experience: “The anticipated mountain came immediately after my honorable release as a missionary. I had no job. With only high school qualifications, there were no prospects of getting any. Living in a developing country required some form of dishonesty to rise to the top through bribing those who could give me a job or entrance into a tertiary institution. I was a returned missionary. All I had was a testimony of the divinity of the Saviour and the truthfulness of the restored gospel.”
Despite those great barriers, President Mahachi said that through prayer and fasting he successfully secured a position in college which opened up the doors of opportunity.

Another example of a true disciple of Jesus Christ is a dear friend of ours in Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa. This wonderful, faithful sister suffered terrible emotional, and even some physical, abuse from her husband over a sustained period of time, and eventually they divorced. She never wavered in her faith and goodness, but because of his cruelty to her, she was deeply hurt for a long time. In her own words, she describes what happened:
“Though I said I forgave him, I always slept with a wound; I spent my days with that wound. It was like a burn in my heart. Many times I prayed to the Lord to take it away from me, but it hurt so bad that I strongly believed I was going to spend the rest of my life with it. It hurt more than when I lost my mom at a young age; it hurt more than when I lost my dad and even my son. It seemed to expand and cover my heart, giving me the impression I was going to even die at any time.
“Some other times I asked myself what the Savior would have done in my situation, and I would rather say, ‘This is too much, Lord.’
“Then one morning I looked for the pain that comes from all this in my heart and went deeper, looking for it in my soul. It was nowhere to be found. My mind quickly passed to review all the reasons I [had] to feel hurt, but I did not feel the pain. I waited the whole day to see if I was going to feel the pain in my heart; I did not feel it. Then I knelt down and thanked God for making the atoning sacrifice of the Lord work for me.”6
This sister is now happily sealed to a wonderful, faithful man who loves her deeply.

For the year-end program at my school, we were putting on a musical. I was so excited, especially when I got a part. I went to all the rehearsals even though no one could drive me there. But when my teacher showed us the costume we were to wear, I was disappointed. It was immodest.
I told my teacher that I would not wear the costume, and she was upset with me. She told me that none of the other girls had a problem with the costume and if I didn’t want to wear it, I couldn’t perform. She even tried to get my mom to pressure me to wear it. But I knew I had to keep the commandments, so I said I wouldn’t perform.
Then, just a few days before the program, the teacher got new costumes that were modest. I’m happy that I didn’t think that “just this one time” it would be OK to be immodest.

When Spencer Cornwall was only four years old, he learned to play music on a pump organ. He couldn’t reach the pedals, so his brother pumped them for him. Spencer was so eager to learn that he would have a lesson in the morning, practice in the afternoon, and then go running back the next morning for another lesson.
When Brother Cornwall was older and had become an accomplished musician, he became music supervisor of the Salt Lake Elementary School District. He also directed the Tabernacle Choir for twenty-three years. He thought making music was a wonderful reason for people to get together. He said, “My greatest pleasure was in teaching children to learn to sing and to discover the joy of making their own music.” Music was his life, and he was still composing when he was ninety-five years old.

The prophets teach us that through keeping temple covenants, our families can be eternal. When our daughter Rachel was married, our family was able to participate in a special temple session beforehand. We greeted our children in the temple, hugged them, kissed them, and told them how much we loved them. We felt great happiness in the Lord’s temple with our children, knowing that we have been sealed as a family for time and all eternity.

The aspiring college professor had been struggling through years of graduate school, hoping to obtain a doctorate from one of the nation’s leading universities. Preparations had been carefully made for his final oral examinations. He and his wife had fasted and prayed intently for several days, invoking the Spirit of the Lord to attend him in his pending exam and time of proving.

The night before his oral defense, this young man tossed and turned and could not sleep. Then, as he gradually began to relax, he saw in his mind’s eye the questions that would be asked the next morning. He began to mentally prepare the answers for each question as it arose in his mind.

The next morning he arrived at the examination at the appointed hour. To his pleasant surprise, the first question asked by his doctoral examination committee was the first question he had encountered in his thoughts the previous evening. Then, as the examination unfolded, question after question was raised in the same order in which it had occurred the night before. Needless to say, he passed the exams with an impressive performance. He has dedicated his life and profession to serving the Lord.

A few years ago, I arrived at the Bountiful Utah Temple to fulfill a late-night cleaning assignment. The turnout for the assignment was impressive, and I wondered for a moment if some would be sent home. I was more than ready to volunteer to leave early. Then I cynically thought to myself, “Of course they won’t let us go early. They will find menial jobs for all of us, thinking it is their duty to keep us here the entire two hours.” I remembered a previous assignment during which I had dusted for more than an hour, only to return a cloth that looked as clean as it had been when it was given to me. I prepared myself to spend two hours cleaning things that didn’t appear to need cleaning. Obviously, I had come to the temple that night out of a sense of duty more than from a desire to serve.
Our group was led to a small chapel for a devotional. The custodian who conducted the devotional said something that will forever change the way I look at temple cleaning assignments. After welcoming us, he proceeded to explain that we were not there to clean things that didn’t need cleaning but to keep the Lord’s house from ever becoming dirty. As stewards of one of the most sacred places on earth, we had a responsibility to keep it spotless.
His message penetrated my heart, and I proceeded to my assigned area with a new enthusiasm to protect the Lord’s house. I spent time with a soft-bristled paintbrush, dusting the tiny grooves in door frames, baseboards, and the legs of tables and chairs. Had I been given this assignment on an earlier visit, I might have thought it ridiculous and carelessly brushed over the areas in an effort to appear busy. But this time, I made sure the bristles reached into the tiniest of crevices.
Because this job was neither physically nor mentally taxing, I was blessed with time to ponder while I worked. I first realized that I never paid attention to such minute details in my own home but cleaned those areas that others would see first, neglecting those known only to members of my family and me.
I next realized that there were times when I had lived the gospel in a similar fashion—living those principles and fulfilling those assignments that were most obvious to those around me while ignoring things that seemed known only to my immediate family or me. I attended church, held callings, fulfilled assignments, went visiting teaching—all in full view of members of our ward—but neglected to attend the temple regularly, have personal and family scripture study and prayer, and hold family home evening. I taught lessons and spoke in church but sometimes lacked true charity in my heart when it came to interactions with others.
That night in the temple, I studied the paintbrush in my hand and asked myself, “What are the little crevices in my life that need more attention?” I resolved that rather than plan to repeatedly clean the areas of my life that needed attention, I would try harder never to let them become dirty.
I remember my temple-cleaning lesson each time we are reminded to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).