Gospel Story Finder

In 1970 my mother was diagnosed with a chronic illness that was shutting down the arteries that fed her brain. She was a particularly bright, elegant, and engaging woman with sparkling eyes. But over the next 13 years, her condition declined. It was like losing a good friend piece by piece.
Dad stepped in to become her primary caregiver. At first he made small sacrifices to make her comfortable and cheerful. He prepared her meals, sang her songs, and held her hand. As time went on, however, caring for my mother became more difficult and more physical. It must have been trying for Dad.
As Mother’s condition worsened, my dad’s own health became a concern. I was there when his doctor told him that Mother needed full-time care in a skilled nursing facility. He would likely die if he continued to give the level of care she required, and then she would have no one to take care of her.
For the last 13 months of my mother’s life, Dad visited her in the nursing facility every day that he was not away on a Church assignment. She didn’t recognize him, but that made no difference to him. He spoke with her as though everything was all right. I would see him return from visiting a stake conference in some far-off place. He would be exhausted. But the first thing he would do when he arrived was go see Mother, to bring what cheer he could.
My father could not have taken better care of my mother. I learned much about sacrifice from watching him take care of her.

Then one day, about a year later, one of Olivio’s American teammates said, “Hey—you’re Mormon. Don’t Mormons go on missions? Are you going to quit the team and go too?”
That started Olivio thinking. “The things I learned made sense to me, and I said, ‘Well, if these things come from God. I have to explain them to other people.”
But leaving basketball—that would be tough. Olivio had just made the Portuguese national team, and his professional team had offered him a very lucrative contract—lots of money, a car, and a luxurious apartment.
“It was a difficult decision to leave basketball, so I decided to get my patriarchal blessing. There it said that I was going to serve the Lord, so I decided to do it. God prepared me to come here and find the gospel by giving me these talents to play basketball. I don’t have a problem leaving it to serve him. I think I can help many people.”
And now, Elder Olivio Gomes Manuel, who left northern Portugal almost two years ago to serve in southern Portugal, is helping many people. He’s well known throughout the mission for his good nature and easy smile, his hard work, and his gentle rapport with the people he towers over.

My name is Micah Bybee. I’m a fourth grade student at Millville Elementary School in Millville, Utah. My teacher, Mrs. Bartelt, asked for volunteers to work as peer tutors in her classroom. She explained that she needed them to teach a few students who needed extra practice in reading. I like reading, and I wanted to help other children have fun reading. My parents gave their permission for me to be a peer tutor in my classroom every morning for twenty minutes.
It took Mrs. Bartelt about four days to train me to be a peer tutor. I learned how to teach a special reading assignment to a girl named Erica Bothwell (a fictitious name)* who has a learning disability. Most of the time it was fun and exciting to be a peer tutor. But it also took a lot of hard work to help her learn how to read words that I thought everyone knew.
I taught Erica how to sound out letters and to read words from a workbook and some other books. Afterward, she read her lessons to Mrs. Bartelt. It was exciting to hear Erica say the sounds and words that I had taught her. She and I were both excited when our teacher placed a special marker on the bulletin board after Erica had completed her first workbook. I invited her over to my house after school, and we celebrated by eating ice cream!
Erica worked very hard during our tutoring sessions, and we enjoyed being together every morning, sitting at a separate table where we reviewed words. She was patient with me, and I learned to be patient with her. Words that came easily to me were often very hard for her to learn. She was often frustrated because she couldn’t learn as fast as most of the other students. But whenever she was discouraged, we worked even harder to learn new words. I brought some stickers from home to give to her whenever she passed off a chapter in her workbook with Mrs. Bartelt. Sometimes after school, Erica and I would practice her reading assignments and do math homework too.
I felt like a real teacher as I tutored, and I noticed that my own schoolwork improved. I concentrated more during school, and I studied harder. Before I became a tutor, I didn’t like doing my homework. Now I do it because I understand how valuable it is to try hard and to learn new things. I was able to practice my own reading skills, too, which made me a better reader. I am more accepting now of children with handicaps. My mother said that I’ve become more tolerant of my sisters’ behavior at home too. Now I accept them for their own personalities and abilities and try not to be critical of their imperfections.
Erica hadn’t liked reading because it was so difficult for her, and she’d felt embarrassed when she tried to read in front of others. The tutoring taught her reading skills and gave her confidence to read more difficult words and stories. She began to feel the joy that comes from being able to read an entire story and understand its meanings.
Erica and I became good friends, and I learned that people who have handicaps like to do many of the same things that I do. I also better understand that we are all children of our Heavenly Father and that we should respect and love each other. We have differences, but we are more alike than we realize. For example, Erica and I both enjoy riding our bikes. We watch TV together and go to swimming lessons on Saturdays. We even practiced reading the Book of Mormon together. I’m so glad that I had the chance to be her tutor. I think that she’s glad too.
I worked with Erica for the whole year, and the time went very fast. It wasn’t very long before she started checking out books from our school library. Her mother and dad were excited to hear Erica reading to her brothers and sisters.
When the school year was over, I wondered who learned the most—Erica or me.

This is a challenging but exciting time. I predict that we will remember it all of our lives. That has been true of my memories of the bursting of the Teton Dam, on an early Saturday in June of 1976. My brother Stuart and I were working the dry farm of our home teacher, Craig Moore, when the dam unexpectedly broke. Hearing the radio report, we drove to the crest of the hill and saw what looked like a giant brown lake spreading across the valley.

The reality of the flood, though, was much more harrowing. Initially, public officials told Main Street merchants to use towels to prevent water from coming under their doors. But soon a wall of water nine-feet tall broke every ground-floor window on Main Street, with plate glass windows exploding as though bombs were going off inside. Many houses were destroyed. One was lifted off its foundation, drifted downstream, and came to rest on a baseball diamond in Smith Park. A similar house was deposited on the north end of the Ricks College football field.

All seemed lost, through no fault of the victims. But the townspeople rallied. And the college became the headquarters for disaster relief. Thanks to thousands of volunteers who came in buses from surrounding states, the college miraculously opened for classes just three months later. In the meantime, the dorms housed displaced flood victims, and the Manwaring Center served hundreds of thousands of meals.

In 1840, when Charles was twenty-one years old, he heard two Mormon missionaries preaching the gospel. He knew that what they were teaching was true, and he asked to be baptized. Charles was the only member of his family to join the Church. Not long after his baptism, Charles also became a missionary and was the companion of the missionary who baptized him! Charles served his mission in England and North Wales until 1843.

Let me tell you a little bit more about what comes through inspired patriarchs. One of the most powerful ways the Lord conveys his will to you and to me is through a patriarchal blessing. The Lord crafts those blessings personally for each one of us. I’ll tell you something a little bit humorous about my patriarchal blessing in that respect, given that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

I took a date one time to general conference in Salt Lake while I was attending BYU. In between conference sessions, we ran into our stake patriarch, Brother Delbert V. Groberg from Idaho Falls. (Incidentally, the “V” in his middle name stands for Valentine). Well, I introduced my date to him and we chatted for a few minutes and then went on to conference and that’s the last I thought of it. A few weeks passed and I was talking to my dad, and he said “I understand that you ran into Brother Groberg down at conference.” I said “Yeah, I did. How do you know that?” And he said, “well, I just happened to bump into him” (They were in the same ward). And they got to talking and I said “Well, what did he say Dad?” And my dad just simply said, “She’s not the one!” You can imagine how I felt when Dad related that experience to me! I recalled the portion of my patriarchal blessing that spoke of marriage and family, and I began to wonder if Brother Groberg had seen a vision of my future wife! I really didn’t know what he saw or felt, but I was impressed that he cared enough about me to offer guidance, and I respected him enough to follow it.

One of these small acts of kindness was performed by Sister Lucy Carr, and led to my first contact with the Church. Sister Carr, a pioneer of the gospel in South Africa, was a schoolteacher at a primary school where my sister Carol also taught. One day, Sister Carr gave Carol a copy of a Church-produced magazine called The Friend, recommending that it had some good stories for Carol to read to her grade 1 class. She accepted the magazine and followed Sister Carr’s recommendation.

Carol then noticed it was a magazine published by a church and asked Sister Carr a few questions about it and the Church. Over a short period, the questions continued. When the time was right, Sister Carr asked Carol if she would be interested in having the full-time missionaries visit her and answer more questions. Carol agreed and as a result, joined the Church in 1971.

Sister Lucy Carr—for taking that step of sharing the gospel in a normal and natural way with my sister Carol, which led to my baptism and conversion.

One day I came home from track practice exhausted. I had a lot of homework due the next day, practice had been grueling, and I was hungry and tired. Trying not to think of all the chores I still had to do, I made it through the doors of my house. My thoughts weren’t so happy as I marched down to the basement. I was ready to lash out at anybody who was in my way. As I made my way into the kitchen, I smelled dinner, which was nearly ready, and saw that my sister was just finishing the dishes. The other rooms were also clean, and good music was playing on the radio. I dropped my stuff in my room and came out to see who had cleaned the place. I asked my sister about it, and she said, “I decided that you might like some supper. And the dishes needed to be done, and you weren’t going to be home for a while, so I just decided to surprise you.” I was overwhelmed. I hugged her. Making my way to my room, my entire attitude changed. Although my day had started off not so great, it ended well, because my sister decided to show an act of kindness. I knelt down and poured out my gratitude to my Father in Heaven.

I would like to read a little statement here that I published in the book I wrote. It is taken from a pamphlet entitled The Strength of the ‘Mormon’ Position (Orson F. Whitney, Independence, Mo.: Zion’s Printing and Publishing Co., 1917). The late Elder Orson F. Whitney of the Council of the Twelve Apostles related the following incident under the heading, “A Catholic Utterance”:
“Many years ago a learned man, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, came to Utah and spoke from the stand of the Salt Lake Tabernacle. I became well acquainted with him, and we conversed freely and frankly. A great scholar, with perhaps a dozen languages at his tongue’s end, he seemed to know all about theology, law, literature, science and philosophy. One day he said to me: ‘You Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don’t even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that’s all there is to it. The Protestants haven’t a leg to stand on. For if we are wrong, they are wrong with us, since they were a part of us and went out from us; while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism’s attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from ancient times, or the restoration of the gospel in latter days.’” (A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, LeGrand Richards, Deseret Book Co., 1958, pp. 3–4.)

President Michaelene P. Grassli, Primary General President: I’m proud to say that Primary children have this year read and discussed the Book of Mormon. Nine-year-old Matt in Wisconsin … said:
“When my father told our family that we would be moving from Denver to Wisconsin, my mother reminded us of Lehi’s family. Like them, I was leaving the only home I had known, all my friends, my school, and my ward. …
“My mother reminded us of how Nephi accepted this challenge—willingly—knowing that the Lord would ‘prepare a way from them that they may accomplish the thing which he commanded them.’
“I have learned that I can do without things, but not without my family. My brothers and sisters and I have tried to be more like Nephi than his complaining brothers. I am grateful for the things that the Book of Mormon teaches us.” (Sunday afternoon session)

Several years ago, I was basically an atheist.
I had been born Catholic, but from my teenage years until I was 25, I felt as though there was a spiritual gap inside of me. I tried attending different churches, but none of them could quite fill the gap. I decided after a while that it would be easier to give up believing in God than it would be to keep trying to find the right church.
I first learned about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith from a TV program about people who buy and sell antiques and other valuable collectible items. Someone in the episode I was watching had brought a very old copy of the Book of Mormon to sell.
As an expert explained what gave the book value, she told a little bit about the history of the Church and the book. The expert told the host, “This is by far the most valuable book you’ve ever had me appraise.”
I was impressed by the book and the story, so I decided to learn more.
I did some research, and the more I learned about Joseph Smith, the more I respected him and related to him.
I too had been searching for truth and didn’t know where to find it.
I too had attended countless churches in search of the right one and hadn’t found it.
As I was scrolling Facebook later, an ad popped up for a page called “Come unto Christ.” I didn’t think much of it. However, something drew me in, and I soon found myself putting my phone number into the site.
A few months later, I received a phone call from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I didn’t answer.
After a quick Google search, I decided to call the number back. The missionaries who answered explained that they’d gotten my information from the Come unto Christ website, and suddenly everything was clear. I’d unknowingly signed up for information from the very Church that I had been learning about.
I started meeting with missionaries and learning more. The spiritual hole inside of me started to be filled. Around the time I was deciding to get baptized, some Christian friends invited me to one of their church campouts.
During the final sermon on the last day of camp, I prayed for God to confirm to me that the Book of Mormon was true. At that exact moment, a student who was studying to be a pastor pulled out the Book of Mormon and said, “Why don’t we read from this book? This book is all about Jesus Christ and is in line with the Bible.” The crowd went silent. I am convinced that this was an answer to my prayer.
After hearing from that student, I felt the Spirit confirm to me that this book is another testament of Jesus Christ. I was baptized soon after.
Since joining the Church, the spiritual hole inside of me has been filled, and my testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon has only continued to grow.
Heavenly Father has helped me know, through prayer and His Spirit, that this is Jesus Christ’s Church. Honestly, I wish I could’ve known about the Church when I was younger. I love this Church. It truly is the Church of Jesus Christ on the earth today.
Cristian Emanuel lives in Argentina. He wants to thank the two sisters who encouraged him to write down his testimony of the gospel.

1 I was nine years old when I first began to really study the Book of Mormon. That year in school I realized that if I finished reading it by a certain date, I could use it for a book report.
2 The night before the report was due, I stayed up late to finish reading it and to draw a picture of Samuel the Lamanite preaching to the Nephites from the city wall.
3 The next day I gave my report. I told everyone about the Book of Mormon and recited my favorite story in it.
4 After class I gave my teacher a copy of the Book of Mormon and bore my testimony that it is true, that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet of God, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church of Jesus Christ.

This last Sunday, we had probably the best first discussion that I’ve ever participated in, taught to one of my wonderful students, a young man from France named Guillaume. On the last day of my class, which is taught to the second year students in our MBA program, I describe for the students how all semester long we’ve been studying about these companies and goals and strategies for achieving these goals, and yet in the way that they invest their money on a day to day and a year to year basis, they tend to invest in things that offer the shortest term payback. That pattern of directing their investment decisions often causes companies that could be very successful in the pursuit of a lofty strategy actually to lead themselves toward failure. And I told my students, “You know, now you are graduating from the Harvard Business School. And a lot of you in your personal lives are going to do the same thing.” I told them that “none of you have a strategy to leave here and go get divorced, and raise children who are alienated from you and become unhappy people, but that is actually the strategy that many of you are going to implement, because as you have opportunities to spend your time and energy, your very likely to spend them in pursuit of career success because it offers them most immediate and tangible evidence of achievement.” And I invite them not to do that, but I tell them, “but in order for you to figure out how you’ve got to spend your time and your energy, you need to figure out what the purpose of your life is.” Then this year I told them about the experience that I had had dedicating an hour everyday when I was a student at Oxford to figuring out what the purpose of my life was. And I invited them to do the same thing.
A couple of days later I got an email from Guillaume, and he said, “Professor Christensen, I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t know what the purpose of my life is. Will you help me? He came in and as we talked he said, “I’m going to spend an hour a day; I just don’t know what to read.” I was able to give him my copy of the Book of Mormon, and invite him to take the missionary discussions. And I was so grateful this Sunday to be able to testify to him that of all the things that I taught him in our class, the things we were teaching him that day were the most important. I was so grateful to be able to tell him that he is a son of God, and that there really is a purpose for him coming here.

A little girl taught me a profound lesson on this subject. Surely you are not above learning from little children. Much of what I know that really matters I have learned from being a father.

Some years ago I returned home to find our little children were waiting in the driveway. They had discovered some newly hatched chicks under the manger in the barn. When they reached for them, a protective hen rebuffed them. So they came for reinforcements.

I soon gathered a handful of little chicks for them to see and touch.

As our little girl held one of them, I said in a teasing way, “That will make a nice watchdog when it grows up, won’t it?” She looked at me quizzically, as if I didn’t know much.

So I changed my approach: “It won’t be a watchdog, will it?” She shook her head, “No, Daddy.” Then I added, “It will be a nice riding horse.”

She wrinkled up her nose and gave me that “Oh, Dad!” look. For even a four-year-old knows that a chick will not be a dog, nor a horse, nor even a turkey. It will be a chicken. It will follow the pattern of its parentage. She knew that without having had a course in genetics, without a lesson or a lecture.

No lesson is more manifest in nature than that all living things do as the Lord commanded in the Creation. They reproduce “after their own kind.” (See Moses 2:12, 24.) They follow the pattern of their parentage. Everyone knows that; every four-year-old knows that! A bird will not become an animal nor a fish. A mammal will not beget reptiles, nor “do men gather … figs of thistles.” (Matt. 7:16.)

In the countless billions of opportunities in the reproduction of living things, one kind does not beget another. If a species ever does cross, the offspring cannot reproduce. The pattern for all life is the pattern of the parentage.

This is demonstrated in so many obvious ways, even an ordinary mind should understand it. Surely no one with reverence for God could believe that His children evolved from slime or from reptiles. (Although one can easily imagine that those who accept the theory of evolution don’t show much enthusiasm for genealogical research!) The theory of evolution, and it is a theory, will have an entirely different dimension when the workings of God in creation are fully revealed.

Since every living thing follows the pattern of its parentage, are we to suppose that God had some other strange pattern in mind for His offspring? Surely we, His children, are not, in the language of science, a different species than He is?

What is in error, then, when we use the term Godhood to describe the ultimate destiny of mankind? We may now be young in our progression—juvenile, even infantile, compared with Him. Nevertheless, in the eternities to come, if we are worthy, we may be like unto Him, enter His presence, “see as [we] are seen, and know as [we] are known,” and receive a “fulness.” (D&C 76:94.)

I could see the young deacons losing interest as my mission companion talked. He was explaining the importance of doing missionary work at their age—planting seeds with their friends.
One young man finally spoke up, “What can I do? I’m only 13. My friends aren’t interested in the Church, and even if they were, their parents wouldn’t let them join.” My companion persisted with the young men, but my mind drifted back to when I was about 12 years old.
I had a best friend, Chris. We did everything together. But whenever a group of us would gather to do something “crazy,” like throw snowballs at cars or toilet paper a house, Chris would always back out. He said his parents would be mad if they found out.
Then one day I talked Chris into stealing tennis balls from the people on the local courts. He followed me, even helped me gather a handful of balls, then took off with me through a hole in the fence. When we arrived at my house I noticed Chris’s face was white.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“We’ve got to take those balls back,” he blurted out.
“No way, they’re ours now,” I replied, but Chris grabbed them and started to run. I’ve always been faster than Chris, but I couldn’t catch him that day. He ran right to the tennis players and gave every ball back. He said he was sorry and then did something I’d never seen before. He asked them for forgiveness. I just knew we were going to be turned into the police, but the men let him go.
When we got home I had a few questions for my best friend.
“I’m a Mormon,” he said.
“I know. You told me.”
“But I didn’t tell you how important my church is to me.” He went on to explain the standards of honesty he had been taught and how he could not feel right about stealing.
Six weeks later I found myself in a font, full of water, ready to be baptized a Latter-day Saint.
Suddenly I came back to the deacons in front of me. I don’t know if it made much difference to those boys, but I was able to say it was an active young man their age who brought me into the Church. I told them they could and should do missionary work. They could plant seeds with their example, just as Chris had done.

Paola Fava has been a member of the Church for 10 years. Her home is in Genoa, a beautiful port city on the northwestern shore of Italy that is famous for being the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and of a traditional Italian food called pesto. Her husband passed away in 2009. She has a little dog, Bak, and she stays busy serving in the Church and doing family history. Here is her conversion story.
A number of years ago, I knew a girl who worked at the London branch of the same company I worked for. She was brilliant in her job and delightful as a friend. I didn’t know she was a Mormon. For many years we kept in touch by letter, and every time she said that she had a lot of work to do for her church, I never understood what sort of work it might be. Then one day she wrote that she was doing “baptisms for the dead,” and this made me curious.
Some years passed, and I went to see her in England. One day during my visit, we sat on the grass and she asked me if we could talk a little bit about God. “How strange,” I thought, but I told her yes. She said to me, “Did you know that a boy in America found plates of gold that told the story of ancient Americans to whom Jesus Christ appeared?” She told me that the boy was also given the message to restore on the earth the ancient Church of Jesus Christ, and he did this despite many difficulties.
This message struck me profoundly. I felt it was indeed true, and that night at her house, I found a copy of the Book of Mormon on the nightstand. But I didn’t want to involve myself with a different church at that time, even though I didn’t feel spiritually well.
One day in another letter she told me that her husband had become a member of her church and things had never been better. “OK, I really must get to know this church!” I said to myself. I called the mission office and arranged to meet with the sister missionaries.
After I received the lessons, I entered the waters of baptism. I shed many tears and felt immense joy, and I experienced innumerable blessings, which continue to this day. My conversion was the fruit of the patience and perseverance of a special friend. She had conviction that her message would deeply impress my heart. I experienced a great change in my life, and I am finally happy in the faith, truly knowing who I am, where I come from, and especially where I want to go.

I have been a member of the Church for seven years. During that time, I have always known that this is the only true Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but at one time in my life, I wasn’t very active.
The problem started when our family moved to a new town. It took us a few months to identify the location of the meetinghouse we were supposed to go to and a few more weeks to start attending. I wasn’t very excited about the change, and after a few weeks, I stopped attending.
One day I received an unexpected but welcome visit from my bishop. He invited me to come back to church on Sundays and to attend seminary. I decided to accept these invitations.
A few weeks after I started going back to church, the bishop introduced the Duty to God program to me. He explained what it consisted of, and I became interested in starting on it.
I started filling out and completing the goals in the pamphlets. I began to realize that the Duty to God program was helping me change my life for the better. I became more active in the Church and loved going to seminary. I am trying to live the standards of the Church better, and I love to read the scriptures and the Liahona.
When I started the Duty to God program, I set goals such as going on a mission and attending the Latter-day Saint preparatory school Benemérito de las Américas, along with many other goals. Last fall, I received the Duty to God Award and the Melchizedek Priesthood, and I’ll be going on a mission soon.
I thank my Heavenly Father each day for giving me the chance to change and become a worthy member of His Church. I am grateful for the programs and leaders of the Church that helped me change.

I had the opportunity to go on a mission to the Fiji Suva Mission at the age of 24 after receiving my Master's Degree. I thought for a long time I was too old to serve a mission but while pursuing a Master's Degree at the University of Arkansas, I had the opportunity to receive my patriarchal blessing which specifically addressed my serving a mission for the Lord. When I received my mission call, I had no idea where the Cook Islands were located, where I was specifically assigned to serve, or the Fiji Islands. I got out the National Geographic Magazines (This was way before Google Search) and excitedly found their locations and read as much as I could about the islands. As my mission came to a conclusion, the Church Educational System man in Fiji approached me about the possibility of coming back to Fiji and teaching in our Church High School that was yet to be built there. I put in my application at his urging and did not think much more about it until approached by CES some three years later having in the meantime been sealed to Sister Bauer in the Oakland California Temple and our having a fifteen month old daughter. We were blessed to go back to Fiji and teach in our Church High School there, The Fiji LDS Technical College; then, some years later, serve as the headmaster of our Church School in Kiribati, Moroni Community School (Now Moroni High School), live in Guam and coordinate seminaries and institutes of religion in Micronesia, live here in Kailua for four years teaching at the Honolulu HI Institute and coordinating seminaries here, and then go over to Hilo and be there for the past 21 and a half years as the Hilo HI Institute Director and coordinating seminaries and institutes of religion for the neighbor islands in the State of Hawaii. During this time we had two of our five children born in Fiji, one while we were in Kiribati, and one in Guam. We have been truly blessed as a family to live in the Pacific Islands among the great people of the islands.

I started doing drugs when I was 12. That was the same time the alcohol, tobacco, and social problems began as well. It led to a life that saw me lie, cheat, steal, and fight with people. I also got in trouble with the law, did poorly in school, and didn’t get along with my family and friends. I am now seeing a drug and alcohol abuse counselor, and I’m trying to quit smoking. One day when I was really down on myself, I got home and saw the New Era. Even though I felt like the stories didn’t relate to my life-style, when I finished I felt loved. I prayed to Heavenly Father for help, and asked for strength to lift me out of my depression. I don’t think I would be alive today if it wasn’t for the New Era and a close friend who has been supporting me through all this.
J. B.Canada

I would like to share an experience in my own life which helps me to remember that God is aware of me and that he will always take care of my needs.

The Miracle of the 13 Bok Choy

In August of 1998 our family began a one-year assignment living and teaching at the Church College in Pesega, Samoa.

My job was to teach in the in-country EIL program. Our young family lived in a campus home next to the country director’s home who at the time was Brother Tavana. Brother Fata and his family, the coordinator of religious education, lived on the other side of us. We enjoyed working and living in Samoa. Our son, Matthew, was baptized during our time there, and we became reacquainted with many of our BYU–Hawaii friends who had returned to work in the Church schools. There was no television reception at the time, so we found ourselves spending a lot of time together as a family.

Without the many distractions of today’s modern world, I also tried my hand at gardening. At that time, next to the country director’s home was a garden area. It was a fenced in piece of land about the size of a tennis court. Vines and other plants had grown up along the fence and since no one could see inside it became my secret garden. Once I caught the gardening fever, I would go there almost every night after work and tend to my plants.

The biggest challenge that I had, however, was that I could not get any vegetables to grow. I would prepare the soil, sow the seeds, and they would spring up, but then the hot Samoan sun would come out and burn them up before I could provide relief, or insects or birds would devour the plant or fruit before I could harvest them. Other times, the plants looked like they were going to make it, but a tropical storm would blow through and flood the garden and my plants would drown. I tried all sorts of vegetables with no luck.

In retrospect, I should have stuck with taro, bananas, and papayas. But this palagi wanted to do it the way he was taught. I was the grandson of Idaho potato and sugar beet farmers, and the son of parents who believed that no summer day of play should begin without first weeding the garden! Of course, it was wrong, but I was young and inexperienced and a bit too proud to admit defeat. I thought I could do it on my own, so I consulted no one.

Finally, I had a breakthrough. I went to the local garden shop and selected bok choy seeds from the seed counter. Like the other plants I had tried to grow, I prepared the soil, made a row, and planted the seeds hoping that these would be the plants that changed my unlucky streak. Within a few days, the seeds sprouted everywhere along the row. There were so many I knew thinning would be required, so I waited a few more weeks until they were large enough to do so.

After thinning the row, I had thirteen plants. These were hardy plants. They didn’t wilt under the sun, the insects for some reason didn’t eat the leaves, and no rain flooded the row. In fact, much to my surprise, my cabbage plants continued to grow and flourish. As they did, I diligently attended to them each night after work, digging around them to loosen the soil to improve aeration, water retention, nutrient uptake, and reduce competition from weeds.

After about a month of the careful nurturing of my beautiful 13 heads of bok choy, I returned to our home and excitedly made a proclamation to my wife and children that the bok choy were ready to harvest. I’m certain that they could have cared less. They had no vested interest in my final success nor could they understand the joy I felt at successfully growing a vegetable from seed to harvest in my Samoan secret garden. So, the next day after work, I returned to my garden with a knife to cut the bok choy and a basket to carry them back to our home. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but I was ready to harvest. As I walked through the gate and looked at my row of bok choy, much to my dismay, I discovered that someone had sneaked into my garden, cut all 13 of my cherished plants, and taken them away!

To say that I was devastated by this turn of events is an understatement. My joy degraded into anger at the person or persons who harvested my plants, and later a mild form of depression overtook me and stayed with me for longer than it should have. It lasted about a month. After some time of wallowing in self-pity, the Holy Ghost whispered to me something like the following: “Brent you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Someone took your bok choy and probably enjoyed eating them. Get over it. Move on. Get a life for Heaven’s sake!” And so I did! I snapped out of my funk and decided that I would return to my secret garden and try again. On the appointed day, I arrived home from work, grabbed some garden tools, and headed to the garden. I had not been back for quite some time, so I was expecting to find quite a few weeds.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I found that my bok choy plants, the ones that had been taken several weeks before, had all grown back. Not only were all 13 plants there, they were bigger and fuller than the ones that had been taken, and they were ready to be harvested. I was in shock. I stood for a long time looking at the row of plants dumbfounded. It appeared as if they had never been taken. At that point in an almost Elder Hugh B. Brown-like “I am the gardener” manner, I heard a voice in my mind say, “Trust in the Lord and He will bless your life. [2] Never mind who took your bok choy, trust in me and you will be blessed.” Of course, I immediately ran home for a knife and a basket, and we ate bok choy for days after. We also shared them with our neighbors and friends. Throughout my life, I have had my share of disappointments because of what I have perceived to be failed opportunities, but like the disappointment I felt with my stolen bok choy, it never really lasts long. In every case so far, I feel like the Lord is saying, “Don’t worry, that is not the path you should go. I know what is best for you. Trust in me.” Remembering the miracle of the 13 heads of bok choy has sustained my faith in a loving and kind Heavenly Father.