Gospel Story Finder

Rachel tries to make sure that people feel included. Once, a new girl at school was sitting all by herself. Rachel sat by her and called out to her friends, “Hey, come on over.” They all sat around the new girl.

I had a good friend who failed to follow the warning in bold print to bail out. There is no doubt he understood the bold print and was well instructed on it. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy. He graduated near the top of his class in pilot training. He spent years studying correct knowledge and training to fly aircraft.

And yet, he simply didn’t believe what he knew to be true. If he really believed the bold print stating, “If the aircraft becomes uncontrollable below 10,000 feet, bail out!” then he certainly would have pulled the yellow “Eject” handle and bailed out of the uncontrollable and doomed aircraft.

Moira nodded. Heavenly Father had helped her before. Like when she and Mamá had joined the Church a year ago.
Moira had been excited to tell her best friend, Dorita, about her baptism. But when Dorita’s parents found out, they wouldn’t let Dorita play with Moira anymore. Moira had felt so lonely.
But Heavenly Father helped her make new friends. On her very first Sunday at church, she saw a girl standing by the door.
“Hi,” the girl said. “I’m Carmen. Do you want to sit with me?” Soon Carmen and Moira became good friends.

Correspondence we receive at Easter or Christmastime provides refreshing memories of dear friends and relatives. Some of those messages are enriched with precious family photographs. Here is one that really caught my attention.
This is one of our great-granddaughters. I’ll call her “Dear Ruby.” This picture reminded me of her mother when she was about the same age. From my files I retrieved this photo of “Dear Ruby’s” mother—one of our granddaughters.
I took this picture of “Dear Ruby’s” mother some 29 years ago. Her eyes are still just as blue.
Fond memories surfaced from half a century ago, when “Dear Ruby’s” grandmother—one of our daughters—was then the newest member of our family. This is one of her baby pictures. Now she is a loving grandmother, and I am “Dear Ruby’s” great-grandfather. (I won’t show you my picture as a baby. That would not help.) These photographs suggest the love that links our four generations together.
Our children, grandchildren, “Dear Ruby,” and all our great-grandchildren are linked in love. They are also linked in love to ancestors. Those links, welded through sacred ordinances, lead to the exaltation of our families. That this sacred goal may be realized for each of us is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Christmas has always been a special time for me. A time for loving. A time for giving. A time for remembering.
I remember the rich, centuries-old Christmas traditions of Czechoslovakia that awed me as a very young child. I remember the candle-lit Christmas trees, the handmade gifts, the smell of festive preparation. I remember the beautiful carols and majestic organ music that brightened the dark streets of Zwickau in East Germany. I also remember the humble attic our family crowded into after we had fled for a second time from perilous situations and started a new life in West Germany after World War II.
As I look back with heartache and joy, perhaps what I remember most about Christmastime is the love my family had for each other, how we loved and accepted the restored Church of Jesus Christ, and how we loved the Savior.

While I was walking off the playground one late afternoon, after several weeks of helping out at the school, the principal pulled me off to the side.

The children were playing on the playground equipment they had earned by collecting Campbell’s Soup labels.

“See that little girl over there?” he asked, pointing to a skinny, olive-skinned, dark-haired girl sitting on the steps.

I nodded.

“She came to us last year from the public school system. The teachers said she was slow, uncooperative and noncommunicative. No one could reach her to teach her. So they sent her here as a last resort. She has really come out of her shell here with these kids.”

I noticed the girl was hugging a young student after he had fallen down.

“But she won’t respond to any adults. As soon as one of the teachers tries to engage her in something, she clams up and stares and won’t respond.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because we’ve tried everything we know and she still won’t respond. I’ve even worked with her myself.”

Then the principal paused.

“And there’s something else,” he said. “I was going through her records today. When she was tested—when she first entered school—she had a very high I.Q. By the time they sent her to us, her I.Q. had dropped to an infantile level. Her hands are deformed, and she has a wooden leg. The records report that she was treated badly by the other public students. But the kids here don’t make fun of her. They adore her. She is everyone’s second mother.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked again.

“I thought maybe you could reach her somehow.”

“I’ll try.”

From that time on I made it a point to observe this little girl every chance I got. I read her records and found out her name was Monica. She was 12 years old. A mother was listed on her records but no father. I noticed Monica spent a lot of time by the piano in the classroom. Because her fingers were deformed and small, she would sometimes start banging on the keys with her palms until all the other children were laughing and stomping their feet. At this point, the teacher would drag her away from the piano and take her to the principal’s office.

I watched the teachers and aids approach Monica with games, papers, blocks, and books. But she wouldn’t respond in any way.

Sometimes I’d sit down at the piano and play a couple of tunes. Monica would stand near the piano and listen. Once I noticed her squatting down at the side of the piano and placing her ear up against the wood.

One afternoon as I was playing, she came over to the bench and sat down next to me. Then she pushed my hands off the piano and began pounding on the keys with her palms. I gently took her hand and rolled it into a fist. Then I guided her hand to the piano and showed her how to play a simple tune that my mother had taught me as a child. It was a tune that she could play by rolling a fist down the black keys.

Monica quickly caught on and played the tune over and over. From that moment, she seemed to sense that I was her friend.

One morning during recess, I noticed Monica crouching beside a bush near the entrance to the school. I walked up behind her and could see that she was studying a chrysalis hanging precariously on a twig. The butterfly inside was almost free, struggling desperately to free its wings.

“You know,” I said whispering next to her ear, “that used to be just a funny looking caterpillar. Now look at it. In a few minutes it will be a beautiful butterfly.”

Monica didn’t say a word. In a moment the butterfly was separating its damp wings, and the gentle breeze soon dried the bright orange and black pattern. Moments later the breeze lifted the delicate wing expanse and the butterfly was gone. Monica cupped her hands and with them she followed the butterfly into the air as if attempting to follow.

Then she turned and looked at me. She looked me directly in the eye. Deep, dark, and brown, her eyes were wet and soft and imploring. In that brief instant, I knew. Monica was not mentally retarded. She was trapped somewhere deep inside.

“I want …” she said.

Then her eyes darted to the ground, and she ran up the stone stairs and into the school.

I suddenly realized that Monica had found some kind of security and love with the mentally retarded children that she could not find in the public school system and at home. Her infantile behavior was simply her way of making sure she could stay here. If she responded to any adult and showed her intelligence, she knew she would be put back into a system where she had been abused.

Weeks grew into months, and soon Monica and I were good friends. But whenever I questioned her about her home, she would avoid the questions and change the subject.

“I like the way you smile at me,” Monica said to me one day. “My mother never smiles at me.”

Later I found out from the principal that Monica lived alone with her mother. Her mother was on welfare and spent most of her days sleeping and most of her nights going from bar to bar. She often had different men living with her. Much of the time there was little or no food at the house.

When Monica had progressed sufficiently that the principal thought she was ready to return to the public schools, he asked me to speak to her about it.

After I talked to Monica, she pulled away from me and told me she would do or act any way she had to to stay at the school.

I spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering what to do. Finally, one morning it came to me. That afternoon I talked to Monica about my idea. She agreed enthusiastically, so I went to the principal.

We worked out a plan where Monica could obtain the regular public school textbooks and materials for her age level and remain at the special school. Then Monica would spend each day doing her regular school work with a little help from the teacher and student aids.

The teachers and principal were amazed at how quickly she grasped her subjects and how quickly she progressed.

My course work became more and more difficult at college, and my hours at Monica’s school became less and less.

Four years later, after my graduation, I walked down to the special school to say good-bye. Most of the same students were there, but they were older now. Monica had developed into a strikingly beautiful young lady.

She had gone through her class work so quickly and well that she had taken her college entrance exams earlier that spring and had been admitted to college on scholarship at the age of 16 for the next fall.

Monica’s teacher was still telling Kenny to “Shh!” when he told his corny jokes. The principal was a little balder and plumper.

The children gave me a going-away party with cake, streamers, hugs, and tears. Monica proudly showed me her college scholarship and admission papers.

The principal put his arm around Monica’s shoulder and said, “You know I’ll be retiring in a few years. I think Monica would make a great replacement for me, don’t you?”

I don’t know what happened to Monica after that. After college I moved away, married, and had children of my own. But I have often thought about her.

Several years ago I was visiting the Holy Land. As we drove by a mustard plant, the director of the BYU Jerusalem Center asked if I had ever seen a mustard seed. I hadn’t so we stopped. He showed me the seeds from the mustard plant. They were surprisingly small.

I then remembered Jesus’s teachings: “For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”5

You can make the sun shineSometimes a cross word comes easily when you’re with a little brother or sister. But it only takes a hug, a smile, and a kind word to bring the sun out again and fill a little heart with joy.You’re rarely closer to heaven than when you’re close to a little child.

David B. Iwaasa is also returning home—to his heritage. Both he and his wife, Jane Kadonaga, are third-generation Japanese Canadians and are heading the Japan Fukuoka Mission.
“Jane and I have a deep love for the Japanese people and want to share the joy of the gospel with them,” Brother Iwaasa said. He feels, just as in 1 Nephi 3:7, that the Lord has prepared a way for them to accomplish this calling, as he has been privileged to serve in Canada as bishop of a Japanese-speaking ward and in a stake presidency of a Japanese stake. Sister Iwaasa has also served in a Japanese-speaking ward and stake.
“As a consequence, I feel that we can understand many of the challenges facing those who become members of the Church in Japan,” Brother Iwaasa said.

The priests in the Farragut Ward, Knoxville Tennessee Stake, make a great team. These five young men, Brad Barber, I-Kang Davis, Tyler Cornaby, Brad Watts, and Jarom Boxx, have been together through basketball tournaments, Eagle Scout projects, and school activities. But more important than any of those things, the boys made sure they were all ready to go on missions. Now they are all serving the Lord as missionaries in different parts of the world.

When our daughter, Emi, was a little girl, she liked to watch my every move as I got ready for church. After observing my routine, she would comb her hair and put on her dress, and then she would always ask me to put on some “shiney.” The “shiney” she referred to was thick, gooey cream that I used to prevent wrinkles. As requested, I would put it on Emi’s cheeks and lips, and she would then smile and say, “Now we are ready to go!” What Emi didn’t realize is that she already had her “shiney” on. Her face glowed because she was so pure and innocent and good. She had the Spirit with her, and it showed.
I wish every young woman assembled here tonight would know and understand that your beauty—your “shine”—does not lie in makeup, gooey cream, or the latest clothing or hairstyles. It lies in your personal purity. When you live the standards and qualify for the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, you can have a powerful impact in the world. Your example, even the light in your eyes, will influence others who see your “shine,” and they will want to be like you. Where do you get this light? The Lord is the light, “and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit.”8 A divine light comes into your eyes and countenances when you draw close to your Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s how we get the “shiney”! And besides, as all of you can see, the “shiney cream” didn’t really work on my wrinkles anyway!

“Should we be raising our families in areas where there are few members of the Church and we are surrounded by much evil, contention, and opposition to righteousness?”
My wife, Mary, and I had these concerns as we were beginning to raise our children in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA, in the late 1960s. The Latter-day Saint population was relatively small. But while the vast majority of people were wonderful, the Bay Area had become a magnet for drug usage and all manner of promiscuous and sinful conduct.
The change in society was significant enough that a concerned stake president asked the leadership of the Church if he should encourage Church members to remain in the Bay Area. Elder Harold B. Lee (1899–1973), then a senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was assigned to address the issue. He explained that the Lord had not inspired the construction of a temple in our area only to have the members leave. His counsel to us was simple but profound:
Create Zion in our hearts and homes.
Be a light to those among whom we live.
Focus on the ordinances of the temple and the principles taught there.
We cherished Elder Lee’s counsel and tried to follow it in our family.
Our children attended schools where there were only two or three LDS children. At the beginning of each school year and before school activities, we discussed in family home evening appropriate responses if they found themselves in compromising situations. We asked them what they would say to friends who might tell them, “Don’t be silly; everyone does it,” “Your parents won’t know,” or “Just once won’t matter.”
We talked about our accountability to the Lord.
We pointed out that we follow Christ’s example when we dress modestly, use clean and appropriate language, and avoid pornography, which now needs to be taught to Primary-age children so that they can have pure lives.
We talked about Joseph of Egypt, who fled when confronted with inappropriate attention from Potiphar’s wife (see Genesis 39:7–12).
Each of our children had at least one experience in which this preparation was essential, but most of the time their friends protected them because they knew their standards and beliefs.

Last night in priesthood meeting we received an entreaty from President Hinckley regarding our new members. He urgently petitioned us to care for our new members with these statements: “I ask of you, each of you, to become a part of this great effort. … Brethren, let us help them as they take their first steps as members. … [This] is a work for home teachers and visiting teachers. It is a work for the bishopric, for the priesthood quorums, for the Relief Society, the young men and young women, even the Primary. … Your friendly ways are needed. … That one who was lost need not have become lost. But if he is out … somewhere in the shadows, and if it means leaving the ninety and nine, we must do so to find him.”

Above the Great West Door of the renowned Westminster Abbey in London, England, stand the statues of 10 Christian martyrs of the 20th century. Included among them is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German theologian born in 1906. Bonhoeffer became a vocal critic of the Nazi dictatorship and its treatment of Jews and others. He was imprisoned for his active opposition and finally executed in a concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was a prolific writer, and some of his best-known pieces are letters that sympathetic guards helped him smuggle out of prison, later published as Letters and Papers from Prison.
One of those letters was to his niece before her wedding. It included these significant insights: “Marriage is more than your love for each other. … In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. … So love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God.”

The Church and Church members mobilized to provide relief after Typhoon Ketsana pummeled the Philippines and Southeast Asia, killing more than 300 people in September and October 2009.
The storm first made landfall in the Philippines, displacing half a million people. More than 560,000 people were evacuated to more than 600 camps. Among the more than 275 confirmed deaths were 12 Church members. Another 14 were missing. The flooding destroyed 44 member homes and damaged 223 others. At least 25 meetinghouses suffered flood damage, and another 25 were used as temporary shelters.
In Vietnam, the typhoon killed more than 40 people in flooding and landslides. Some 200,000 people were evacuated from central provinces before the storm hit. All Church members and missionaries in Vietnam are safe and accounted for.
The following week, Typhoon Parma reached the northern provinces of the Philippines, killing at least another 160 people.

When President Timothy L. Farnes was 14 years old, a friend of another faith began challenging his religious beliefs. For the first time in his young life, Timothy testified that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true.
“The Spirit filled the room. It was palpable,” he recalled. “We all felt it, and we all changed.”

A new girl moved into my ward when I was just starting fifth grade. Her name was Gilly (short for Gillian).
Gilly was in my Primary class. But she stopped coming to church for a while. One Sunday I called and told her that the other girls in my class and I missed her and hoped to see her at church again. And we did see her at church again!
Now I go to middle school and sit by Gilly in health class, along with two other girls from our Primary class. I really enjoy being a missionary now and a friend. I like helping people feel happy and fit in. I want people to feel the Spirit and the same warm happiness that I feel at church.

Material blessings are a part of the gospel if they are achieved in the proper way and for the right purpose I am reminded of an experience of President Hugh B. Brown. As a young soldier in World War I, he was visiting an elderly friend in the hospital. This friend was a millionaire several times over who, at the age of eighty, was lying at death’s door. Neither his divorced wife nor any of his five children cared enough to come to the hospital to see him. As President Brown thought of the things his friend “had lost which money could not buy and noted his tragic situation and the depth of his misery,” he asked his friend how he would change the course of his life if he had it to live over again.

The old gentleman, who died a few days later, said: “As I think back over life the most important and valuable asset which I might have had but which I lost in the process of accumulating my millions was the simple faith my mother had in God and in the immortality of the soul.

“… You asked me what is the most valuable thing in life I cannot answer you in better words than those used by the poet.” He asked President Brown to get a little book out of his briefcase from which he read a poem entitled “I’m an Alien.”

I’m an alien, to the faith my mother taught me.
I’m a stranger to the God that heard my mother when she cried.
I’m an alien to the comfort that, “Now I lay me,” brought me.
To the everlasting arms that held my father when he died.

When the great world came and called me, I deserted all to follow.
Never nothing in my blindness I had slipped my hand from His.
Never dreaming in my dazedness that the bubble fame is hollow.
That the wealth of gold is tinsel, as I since have learned it is.

I have spent a lifetime seeking things I spurred when I found them,
I have fought and been rewarded in many a winning cause,
But I’d give it all, fame and fortune and the pleasures that surround them,
If I only had the faith that made my mother what she was.

“That was the dying testimony of a man who was born in the Church but had drifted far from it. That was the brokenhearted cry of a lonely man who could have anything money could buy, but who had lost the most important things of life in order to accumulate this world’s goods” (Continuing the Quest, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1961, pp. 32–35; italics added).

I was reared in a home of wise, loving, and responsible parents. I was reared in a home where a sweet mother was always awake when I came home, like Brother Dunn’s parents. There was always an opportunity to report and to talk. These sessions are some of my choicest memories. In that home was nurtured the testimony that I bear you today. I know that God lives; that Jesus is the Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I know that President Joseph Fielding Smith is a living prophet today, with the keys of the kingdom. I know that if we will follow the counsel we have been given in this conference, our homes will be better, our service more effective, and our joy more full. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I watched Cynthia prance across the playground, followed by three girls who wanted to be popular, like her. Cynthia’s earrings were long and silvery. She wore pink lipstick and bracelets that sounded like chimes.
I had to admit, I was jealous. Cynthia was pretty—and pretty snobby. My friends and I sat on the grass at recess, pointing out every snobby thing she did.
One day, Cynthia wasn’t at school. When I got home, Mom asked, “Do you know Cynthia Harper?”
“Yes. Why?” I asked.
“She had an accident yesterday.”
“Really? What happened?”
“Both of Cynthia’s parents were at work. She forgot her house key, so she tried to open a basement window. She slipped and pushed her arm through the glass.”
I gasped. “Will she be OK?”
“I think so,” Mom said. “She had to have surgery. Mrs. Keller was the one who found her.”
I shuddered thinking about the accident. Then I realized something. “Did you say Mrs. Keller found her?” The Kellers lived on our street.
Mom nodded. “Cynthia’s family lives in the green house.”
I knew Cynthia lived nearby, but I didn’t know she was my neighbor!
The next day, I told my friends about what happened to Cynthia.
“Serves her right,” Caroline said.
I thought about how unhappy Cynthia must be. “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “My mom said she’ll have to wear a cast all summer. She’s lucky she can even move her fingers.”
“Sorry,” Caroline mumbled.
After school that day, I went to my room. My eyes fell on a pair of tiny earrings I had gotten for my birthday that I hadn’t worn yet. An idea came to me. Maybe I could give them to Cynthia.
“What are you thinking?” I asked myself. “She doesn’t know you, and she’d never wear earrings like that.”
But before I knew what I was doing, I was carrying a get-well card and the earrings up the street to the green house.
Cynthia’s mom answered the door. “Is Cynthia here?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“She’s right here.” Her mom smiled, and I looked inside to see Cynthia sitting on the couch.
“I’m Kim,” I said. “I live up the street.”
Cynthia smiled. “Hi.”
“I heard about what happened, and I hope you feel better soon.” I gave her the card and earrings and held my breath, waiting for her reaction.
Her eyes lit up. “Thank you! You are so nice!” she exclaimed.
“Um, are you … feeling better?” I stammered.
Cynthia nodded. “It hurts a little. But I’m OK.” She held out her arm so I could see her pink cast.
“Well, see you later,” I said as I hurried out the door.
I skipped all the way home. I knew I had been brave and that I had done the right thing. But most of all, I knew I had been wrong about Cynthia. She wasn’t snobby—my friends and I had been the snobs.
Cynthia and I didn’t become best friends, but every time we saw each other in the hall or at recess we smiled and said hi. A few weeks later, school ended and I moved away. Knowing I had been wrong about Cynthia helped me not to judge others at my new school. Making friends was easier when I remembered that being nice could start with me.