Gospel Story Finder

After crossing the Colorado River by ferry, the company still faced more than 240 kilometers of rugged ground. Elizabeth M. Decker described this land in a letter to her parents. “It’s the roughest country you or anybody else ever seen; it’s nothing in the world but rocks and holes, hills, and hollows. The mountains are just one solid rock as smooth as an apple.” Because the land turned out to be rougher than anticipated, the journey took much longer than expected—six months instead of six weeks—making the so-called shortcut extremely arduous. Two babies were born along the way. Supplies had to be brought in to the company by mule train. On 6 April 1880, the exhausted company came upon a few acres of good farmland near a small river. They named the spot Bluff City.
Though travel worn, the pioneers had remained true to their resolve to follow the prophet and move forward, and they had endured the hardships in good spirits. As one member of the company recalled, “In a camp … moving … through extremely rough country, one would naturally look for some trouble and a few accidents, but this was not the case. All was hustle and harmony.”

Photograph posed by model
I grew up in an unstable environment. My biological parents abused and neglected me, and I experienced a lot of difficult challenges. I battled with anxiety, body-image issues, anorexia, and situational depression that held me prisoner for years.
My biological parents had been sealed in the temple, but soon after I got baptized at eight, they started drifting away from the Church. And the further they drifted away from their covenants, the worse our situation became.
At 14, I was the caregiver to my autistic brother and my mother. I was lost and out of control. I hated myself and my situation and believed my life would never change.
But then a miracle happened. My biological mother realized she couldn’t take care of me and called her brother in Singapore to ask if he would adopt me. With packed bags and teary eyes, I boarded a plane to begin a new life—one free from abuse. But adjusting to my adopted family and a new culture was difficult, and I struggled to move forward.
My adoptive parents did everything they could to help me. I saw therapists and doctors. I also started going to church again, but learning about a Heavenly Father who loves me and has a purpose for me was hard, because I didn’t believe it after all I had endured.
I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know how to heal from the past and still felt hopeless about the future.
One day, I was pondering about how short mortality is. I didn’t want to spend my life unhappily. I needed to learn from my trials, apply the gospel principles I had been taught, and invite Christ into my life.
I took a leap of faith and started kneeling and asking Heavenly Father every day for the power to forgive my biological parents, to change my fear into faith, to find healing and happiness, and to recognize love in my life. I went to institute and began studying scriptures and applying gospel truths in my life.
I truly sought the healing power of Jesus Christ and His Atonement. And over time, my life started to change. As I was patient, received therapeutic and medicinal treatment, and filled my life with the Spirit each day, I began to heal: I felt less withdrawn and more like myself. I felt safe. I served others. I loved, forgave, and accepted myself. I built healthy, loving relationships. I began to feel Heavenly Father’s love for me. And for the first time in my life, I felt true joy.
I can’t change my past, but as Doctrine and Covenants 122:7 says, “All these things shall give [me] experience, and shall be for [my] good.” I know now that the Savior sustained me through my struggles. Despite them, I have grown so much because of my desire to change and because I continue to turn to Him.
If you are in a difficult family situation, know that you have a Father in Heaven who knows you and loves you and will open the doors to a bright future. Before being adopted, I told myself that my circumstances would never change, and that I would never get married or have children because I was afraid they would suffer as I did. But I’ve learned that no matter what struggles we have experienced in our families, as we seek Christ, we can build our future homes and eternal families with hope, gospel truths, and love.
As Elder Clark G. Gilbert of the Seventy taught: “We all … start in different places with different life endowments. Some are born with high intercepts, full of opportunity. Others face … circumstances that are challenging. … We then progress along a slope of personal progress. Our future will be determined far less by our starting point and much more by our slope. Jesus Christ sees divine potential no matter where we start. … He will do everything He can to help us turn our slopes toward heaven.”1
Whatever your circumstances, there is hope and healing found in Jesus Christ! He is with you, and He will guide you to peace and joy as you seek Him—always.

When we had submitted our papers, the COVID-19 pandemic had already started and foreign missionaries were forced to return home, and we were uncertain if we would serve a full-time mission. Two weeks later the prophet declared that we had to close the doors of the meetinghouses and 30 days later I received my call to serve a mission in the Kinshasa East mission with six months of preparation and saw the increase in the number of cases related to COVID-19.

I was still in a state of uncertainty, and I knelt down and asked the Lord if He wanted me to be a full-time missionary as I knew personally that He knew the situation perfectly, and my MTC date was postponed three more weeks. On Oct. 15, 2020 I started my training at Accra Ghana Missionary Training Center through technology and I experienced a most memorable experience of my life, spending the training on Zoom every day for three weeks made my faith grow and increase my trust in the Lord because He knew that He had prepared me to serve Him in this moment of technology in His work to learn the best ways to use technology and to help others to come to Him through this medium.

What was one experience you had on the show that illustrates how you had to live your faith?
There was one time where a group of teenagers wanted to go to a party and I thought, “Oh fun! Dancing and stuff!” But then I realized what they meant by it—drinking and stuff—and I felt sick to my stomach, because I’d already committed to going. What could I say? I really struggled with that. After worrying about it for a while, I realized what I had committed to, and I apologized to all of them. I just said that that’s not who I am and that’s not what I do, and I was just going to have to pass on this one. And it’s cool, because I actually just had a really close friend who found it really cool that I did that. He asked me a lot more about the Church, and he actually got baptized this last summer! It shows that good can come from standing up for what you believe in.

It is not easy to give up our personal priorities and desires. Many years ago a new missionary in England was frustrated and discouraged. He wrote home saying he felt he was wasting his time. His wise father replied, “Forget yourself and go to work.” Young Elder Gordon B. Hinckley went to his knees and covenanted with the Lord that he would try to forget himself and lose himself in the Lord’s service. Years later, as a mature servant of the Lord, Elder Hinckley would say, “He who lives only unto himself withers and dies, while he who forgets himself in the service of others grows and blossoms in this life and in eternity.”

For example, one young girl had great physical beauty. When she walked in a room of strangers, people stopped talking. They seemed in awe of her looks. Boys she didn’t know would stop her and ask for her telephone number. Attention and opportunities came to her just because of how she looked. She was popular and had friends. But in speaking with a Young Women leader, she confessed that her good looks sometimes made her uncomfortable. She explained that she didn’t know if people liked her for herself or because she was pretty. Sometimes friends were only friendly for a short time. She didn’t trust any of the young men who approached her because she felt they didn’t really want to get to know her; they just seemed to want to go out with her because of her looks. Instead of making her happy, her beauty made her feel insecure because she wondered if people would still like her if she weren’t beautiful.

When President David O. McKay was a young missionary in Scotland, he was homesick, discouraged, and low in spirit. As he walked down the street with his companion, he noticed an inscription chiseled in a stone lintel of an unfinished building which read, “Whate’er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part.” From that moment, he began to act the part of a good missionary and became a great one. This was a learning experience that helped him in numerous important callings he received later in life. (See Cherished Experiences from the Writings of President David O. McKay, comp. Clare Middlemiss, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1955, p. 174.)

A few months ago I had an opportunity to take a morning walk on a mountain trail with four of my grandchildren. We each brought a bag so we could collect treasures from nature. As we looked for pieces to put in our collection, we found many different colors, designs, and textures in the leaves and rocks. It was hard to choose. I soon noticed that the children’s bags were filling up. Each leaf the children selected was unique, but because it was late fall, most of the leaves had dark weathered spots, irregular shapes, or faded and discolored parts. Because of this, I was reluctant to add things to my bag. I was looking for a leaf that showed the brightest colors and had no flaws. If it wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t going to treasure it. But this meant that my bag had very little in it.

Later, as I thought about this experience, I realized that I had cheated myself of much delight and happiness that could have been mine. I didn’t appreciate the uniqueness of the objects because I was looking for what I had deemed perfection. My grandchildren had been wiser than I had been. They had savored the odd shapes and spots on the leaves. They giggled at and enjoyed the brittle crispness of the dying leaves, and they delighted in the soft, faded colors. They filled their bags with happy treasures to take home. We can fail to see and enjoy the unique happiness and beauty in each day if we are so focused on our desire for what we want instead of what the Lord has designed for us.

In spring 1834, some 200 elders, known as Zion’s Camp, marched 900 miles from Kirtland, Ohio, to aid the destitute Saints driven from their homes in Jackson County by Missourians. The Missourians’ plans to attack the relief force were frustrated when a severe hailstorm drove them away.
Two days later, mob leader Colonel Sconce and other members of the mob, humbled by the fury of the storm, met with the men of Zion’s camp to learn their intentions. Joseph spoke as follows:
“I arose, and, addressing them, [related] the sufferings of the Saints in Jackson county, and also our persecutions generally … ; and that we had no intention to molest … any people, but only to administer to … our afflicted friends; and that the evil reports circulated about us were false, and got up by our enemies to procure our destruction. When I had closed a lengthy speech, the spirit of which melted them into compassion, they arose and offered me their hands, and said they would use their influence to allay the excitement which everywhere prevailed against us; and they wept when they heard of our afflictions and persecutions, and learned that our intentions were good. Accordingly they went forth among the people, and made unwearied exertions to allay the excitement.”4

I was baptised on the 14th in May 1955 in Liverpool, when the branch was meeting in Summerfield, a grand old house which stood on Mill Bank where the stake centre now stands. The following year, Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985), then an Apostle, visited Summerfield because he was in the area.
Even as a very young teenager, I could tell that there was something special about him. He did a wonderful presentation on tithing. We had been in the Church for less than a year and I was part of the choir along with my mother. I was seated at the front and had the advantage of watching him come down the aisle towards the stand.
He stopped and stood in front of the pulpit. He said that he wanted someone to help him.
He had taken the trouble to find ten pieces of three pence (a small gold-coloured coin with many sides resembling our 50-pence piece) before coming to the meeting. He then called a young primary boy named Geoffrey Nugent to come to the front and said, “I want you to help me. Hold out your hand.”
Geoff held out his open hand as Elder Kimball counted the ten coins, one by one, into his hand. Then he asked him, “What have you got there?” “I have ten threepenny pieces” Geoff replied and Elder Kimball said “Yes, now will you do something for me, will you give me one coin back?”
Geoffrey gave him one back, and Elder Kimball said, “Now see this one which you have given back to me? How many have you got left?” Geoffrey counted them and said, “Nine.”
“You’ve got nine and I’ve got one. That’s all the Lord wants from you. He wants one out of every ten of the pennies you have. Would you do that for the Lord? We call it tithing. Would you pay your tithing?”
Geoffrey said he would, and Elder Kimball said, “Well, I am giving you this one back. I am trusting you to pay it in tithing.” He then gave the coin he was holding back to Geoffrey.
I have never forgotten that lesson. Geoffrey went on to do that same lesson with one of his friends, Roy. Elder Kimball taught him, and the rest of us, about tithing, in a simple yet profound way. I was just a young teenager then, but that experience has stayed in my mind and heart all these years.

I’ve always asked a lot of myself, especially in high school. And I often fell short because I tried to accomplish so many things at once to prove that I was good enough. One year I decided to learn ballroom dancing, take music lessons, and join an ensemble. I thought I needed to do as much as I could to develop and perfect my talents. But at a certain point, I had to give everything up because it was all just too much for me to handle. I was so hard on myself. I felt like a failure, and failing was one of my biggest fears.

I know I’m not the only person who struggles with perfectionism. So many of us are trying our best every day and feeling discouraged when we don’t accomplish everything perfectly. But despite our efforts, none of us will ever be completely perfect here on the earth. So how can we strive for perfection when all efforts seem so futile? Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shares an answer: “Be ye therefore perfect—eventually.”1

Striving for perfection is a good thing, but it can become negative if we let it overwhelm us. With everything this life asks of us physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually, it’s important that we don’t burn ourselves out by settling for nothing less than perfection. And it’s even more important to think about what Heavenly Father asks of us. He doesn’t want us to be burnt out from trying to do too much.

The Lord taught in Doctrine and Covenants 10:4, “Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided to enable you to translate; but be diligent unto the end.” We can apply that to our lives. Heavenly Father wants us to be happy, and we will be if we do what He tells us to do in the best way we can. Even if our efforts are not quite perfect yet.

The word perfect originally comes from the Latin word perficere, which breaks down into per- (“completely”) and facere (“do”). So perfection actually means “complete.” And we cannot be complete without Jesus Christ (see Moroni 10:30). I think many of us often think we aren’t good enough. And, well, we aren’t! That is, without Christ we aren’t. As Ammon said: “I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things” (Alma 26:12).

With Jesus Christ, we can always strive to become better, even so much that we will become perfect and complete one day because He will make up for our imperfections. “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32).

Over the years I’ve realized I didn’t fully understand and comprehend what the Savior’s Atonement means for and to me. I thought I needed to have a flawless performance here on earth and that I was left alone to figure out how to fulfill this task. But now I know that we are never alone. If we strive to focus on Jesus Christ and keep Him in our hearts and in our minds, our weaknesses will change into strengths—just like how my struggle with perfectionism is changing. I know I’m not perfect. But Christ can help us overcome any weaknesses, sins, challenges, or fears. He understands us and knows how to succor us. I hope we may all enjoy His infinite love. And realize that although we aren’t perfect now, if we strive to follow Him, we will be one day.

The work and privation were intensified for the entire family when Brigham’s mother died of tuberculosis in his 14th year. The father soon after moved to a new homestead on 100 acres of timber 15 miles from any settlement and was sometimes away working or getting supplies in the nearest towns. At these times the children were left to clear land and care for the maple trees by themselves. Brigham’s younger brother, who was named after the great Methodist preacher, Lorenzo Dow, recalls that one time when he and Brigham were left alone for a few days while their father went for food, they were famished from living only on the insubstantial maple sugar. Brigham finally shot a robin that lit near the house, and while it was cooking, they managed to thump a few spoonfuls of flour out of the cracks of the empty flour barrel and thus “thickened the broth.”7 The grimness of such an existence was intensified by the father’s continuing insistence that the children not indulge in any amusements. Brigham remembers that his brother Joseph, older by four years, seemed never to smile “during some four or five years.”8

One of our main forms of proselyting was by using street meetings. On regular evenings we would start our meetings with a song and prayer at Pemberton Square in Boston or Harvard Square or Central Square in Cambridge. Sunday afternoon was usually spent on the “Commons” where there was a different meeting going on under every tree. Choosing a site for ourselves, we would pick up a discarded wooden ice-cream spoon, and stooping down, scratch out our topic in the gravel path. This usually brought a crowd of curious ones to see what was going on, and then it was up to the speaker to produce. It was interesting, and some lively conversations usually took place, but no conversions resulted.

We were driving through the majestic Swiss Alps on a family vacation when, without warning, our van lost all power. My husband, Floyd, pulled over to the side of the alpine road and tried to restart the engine. Suddenly there was a loud bang. “It’s okay,” Floyd said. “Just a backfire.”
But something made me look out the rear window. To my horror, I saw flames of fire coming out from under the van, spreading across the back of the vehicle. “There’s a fire!” I cried. Floyd reacted instantly. “Everyone out of the van—now!” he yelled, running around to open the side doors for us. Our two girls, ages sixteen and six, quickly climbed out of the van and ran down the roadside out of harm’s way. Our four-year-old son, shoeless and frightened, was next into his father’s arms. He was sent running away from the burning van which we expected to explode at any minute.
The baby and I were last. It seemed to take forever to unfasten the harness holding him in his car seat. Floyd helped us out, and we ran, too.
A cloud of oily black smoke was rising from the burning van as a young French couple stopped. The man ran to telephone for help. His wife helped me calm the children.
Next a truck driver stopped, and began to put out the fire with an extinguisher from his truck. Then he helped my husband rescue most of our baggage. The van continued to burn.
By now, farmers had wandered out of their homes to watch the excitement. Soon a large fire truck and police cars arrived. Quickly, the fire crew put out the blaze and retrieved the rest of our baggage.
There we were, our suitcases scattered beside the burned-out van, stranded at the side of a highway in Switzerland—a long way from our home in California. But we felt relieved and thankful to be safe and to have most of our baggage as well.
“Anyone here speak English?” my husband asked hopefully. There were only blank looks and a few shrugs.
Then a man and his son stepped forward. “You come to my house,” he said in halting English. “You come to my house.” He pointed across the valley to a small cottage. It took three trips in his little car to get all of us and our baggage there. Our new-found friend’s wife and family fed us, put our weary children to bed, and helped us sort and repack all our things.
The wife spoke perfect English, and we stayed up late into the night talking with our hosts, but it wasn’t until the next morning as we prepared to leave that we discovered they were Latter-day Saints, too. It made our host family even more special to us.
That day in the Alps was the most memorable part of our vacation. We will never forget our frightening experience. Nor shall we forget that Swiss family—brothers and sisters in the gospel whom we found by accident—and the love they showed for us.

Dave reached the boat and squatted in the dirt beside it. I wonder who put the boat back, he thought. I wonder how they found him and how they knew where to put the boat. He thought of how that had been his idea, to build the boat, and how he had shown Rod how to do it. Now that was something Rod wasn’t good at—he had wasted a lot of good lumber trying to build his share of the boat. Dave remembered what Rod had said when Dave had mentioned it once: “I’m not too good at this, and I need to learn. What if you die or something? There wouldn’t be anyone here to show me how to build things. I need to learn.” And then he had laughed and shoved Dave, and they had started wrestling. That was another thing Rod was good at. Dave could beat him almost all the time when it came to pure grapple; but if beat meant pin, Dave was the sure loser.

I wonder what Rod’s doing right now, Dave thought, and then he began to whistle softly to himself. He was a little afraid. The quiet night, black and starless, the black and quiet lake where his best friend had drowned the night before, the thoughts of spirits and ghosts—he began to whistle the tune to “Magdalena Katalena” very softly to himself. But as he did, he thought to himself, I’ll bet Rod wasn’t afraid last night. And then he thought, as he shoved the boat out into the lake and jumped in after it, wetting only one leg and that only to the ankle, that it all wasn’t fair; it just wasn’t fair.
He turned his back to the front of the boat and began to row in deep and heavy strokes. It isn’t fair, he thought to the rhythm of his work, that Rod should have to die when he was so capable and so happy and so spiritual—how could a guy like that drown anyway?
He rowed on out to the spot where he heard that Rod had drowned and sat back in the boat and looked up into the sky. It was as black as the water beneath him, but the water scared him. If it could get Rod, he thought, what would it do to me? And he saw in his mind Rod’s face, white in wet blackness, a pale oval beneath the boat, clawing up to air but never finding it. Dave tried to shut the vision from his mind. He thought of the roadshow earlier that year, in the spring, when Rod had played the turnip and Dave had been the dwarf. Rod had been in Dave’s garden, a turnip almost as large as the gardener. They had laid him on Dave’s kitchen table up there on the stage, and Dave had brought out a knife to cut through his red and whiteness.
No, Dave thought to himself and sat up in the boat. You’re really morbid, aren’t you, Peters? So he tried to see Rod somewhere else, and where he saw him was at a special stake meeting as one of the youth speakers. “I’ve been assigned to speak on why I’m going on a mission,” he had begun, and Dave had groaned. What an awful way to start a talk, he had thought. But he did have to admit one thing: even if Rod wasn’t the best speaker in the world, when he spoke people listened because they knew he meant every word of what he said.
Dave gripped one oar by its end and squeezed it hard. What happened here last night? he thought. How could you let yourself drown? It’s unfair! And then Dave finally leaned over the edge to look into the clear black water. He thought of the legends that always circulated around the town in the summer that the lake was bottomless—and that giant prehistoric fish had been seen by skin divers again that spring.
The lake had been where Dave and Rod spent their free time. That blackness was a deep blue during daylight hours, the kind of blueness whose color by itself invited one to enter. Dave could see Rod, standing on the bow of the boat, clad in cut-off jeans and no shirt, saying, “See ya later, pilgrim!” and then jumping in. He could stay underwater longer than anyone else Dave knew.
He dipped his hand into the water. It was terribly cold, the kind of cold, he thought, that could cramp a person’s muscles in a moment. Why had Rod jumped in? Dave wondered. He knew better. He should have been more careful. They had lots of plans together—plans that would make him be careful. Like Ricks College next fall, where they would room together in the dorms; like the missions they had planned. Rod would be glad to see him make it. Dave remembered the long talks they had had about missions and girls and the gospel and their parents. They had shared fears and doubts. But later Rod became set and firm, his doubts gone. He knew where he was going. And he always knew the right things to say to help Dave make up his mind to do what he knew he should do—even though it sometimes took a lot of discussing before those right things came out.
Dave looked back up at the sky—there were stars out now; the clouds had parted some—and he felt the lump growing in his throat again, and thought, Don’t be stupid. Crying won’t bring him back. And he thought, I’ll bet Rod wouldn’t cry over you. He’d just smile and touch your hand at the funeral and whisper, “Take care, buddy. See ya before too long.”
But those thoughts didn’t help, and Dave’s throat swelled until he felt he couldn’t really breathe, and the white puffs that had been coming from his mouth and nostrils nearly stopped for a moment. And then the hurt pushed itself up and out his eyes so they glistened in the darkness and his breath caught, then rushed out, then caught again, and his eyes glistened.
And he lay back in his rowboat and sobbed in the dark over the lake.
“Why did it have to be you, Rod?” he said out loud. “You were the good one, the strong one. I won’t do much good here. But you were good; you could even milk with gloves on—” and then he smiled through his tears and laughed a little even while he was crying.
“Rod would think you’re a pretty dumb guy,” he said to himself. Then he whispered. “We were pretty good friends, weren’t we, Rod?”
He leaned over the edge of the boat. The white puffs of air floated over the water. They were coming more freely now. Heavenly Father, he said in his mind, Rod was a pretty good guy, and I’m sure you were proud of him. You know we were close friends—best friends—and I’m really missing him. I think we did everything together. I’m feeling kind of alone.
Then he closed his eyes tight, and felt the cold tears on his cheeks, and thought. All I ask of thee is to help me become the kind of person Rod was. I want to see him again.
Dave sat up straight on the boat’s crossbar. He and Rod had had a boat race once. A neighbor had loaned them his boat. They were going to go two out of three, but they didn’t need to. Dave won the first two races. They had laughed and teased each other, and then Rod had jumped out of his boat and swam in four or five quick strokes over to Dave’s boat and started rocking it till he had swamped it.
We haven’t had a good tussle like that for a long time, Dave thought.
And then he said, half aloud, “Beat you to shore, Rod.” He started rowing as hard as he could, puffing out the white air until his lungs felt raw. Getting a little out of shape, aren’t you, Peters, he thought to himself. Maybe you ought to go out for basketball this winter.
The boat hit the bank and he clambered out, getting both feet wet and not caring. He pulled the boat up completely onto the bank and left it there without looking back. His house was over a mile from the bank, and his folks might be getting worried, he thought. He took off in an easy run, singing under his breath, “Her lips stuck out like two big weiners; she used them round the house like vacuum cleaners. Oh, Magdalena Katalena Hoopensteiner—” his white breath clearing the way through the black night before him.

It happened for me when I performed the baptism of a young man. I knew that I had been called by the Savior’s ordained servants as a missionary to teach His gospel and to testify of Him and of His true Church. My missionary companion and I had promised the young man that he would be cleansed through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ as he repented with faith in the Savior and was baptized by one of His authorized servants.
As I lifted the young man out of the waters of the baptismal font, he whispered in my ear, “I am clean, I am clean.” In that moment, I remembered the Savior’s baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. Even more, I remembered that I was doing the saving work of a resurrected and living Savior—attended by the Holy Ghost, as John had been.

The afternoon my mother died, we went to the family home from the hospital. We sat quietly in the darkened living room for a while. Dad excused himself and went to his bedroom. He was gone for a few minutes. When he walked back into the living room, there was a smile on his face. He said that he’d been concerned for Mother. During the time he had gathered her things from her hospital room and thanked the staff for being so kind to her, he thought of her going into the spirit world just minutes after her death. He was afraid she would be lonely if there was no one to meet her.
He had gone to his bedroom to ask his Heavenly Father to have someone greet Mildred, his wife and my mother. He said that he had been told in answer to his prayer that his mother had met his sweetheart. I smiled at that too. Grandma Eyring was not very tall. I had a clear picture of her rushing through the crowd, her short legs moving rapidly on her mission to meet my mother.
Dad surely didn’t intend at that moment to teach me about prayer, but he did. I can’t remember a sermon from my mother or my father about prayer. They prayed when times were hard and when they were good. And they reported in matter-of-fact ways how kind God was, how powerful, and how close. The prayers I heard most were about what it would take for us to be together forever. When I saw in my mind my grandmother rushing to my mother, I felt joy for them and a longing to bring my sweetheart and our children to such a reunion.

Thousands of miles from the Sacred Grove, Brother Kim’s homeland was now littered with the pieces of a civilization shattered by war. Thousands had died, cities and industries had been reduced to rubble, and the homes and livelihood of millions had been destroyed. Hungry refugees lived in makeshift huts. It was in this setting that Brother Kim undertook the Lord’s errand—to feed his sheep. But he did not face this awesome task without assistance.
In South Korea, war had brought a semblance of Church organization through the worship meetings held by Latter-day Saint servicemen on military bases. Brother Kim attended these meetings and began his proselyting career by inviting the servicemen, some of them former missionaries, to teach his family. They taught in English, with Brother Kim translating. He also joined these unofficial missionaries in seeking other investigations. By July 1952, there were enough Korean investigators to have their own Sunday School meetings separate from the servicemen.
When one of Brother Kim’s former students confided that she was severely depressed and considering suicide, he told her:
“Dear sister, I know of a gospel—a wonderful gospel—capable of giving you new hope, new life. If you study it and pray to God, I promise you these things: health, happiness, joy and a desire to help others find those things, too.”
She and her daughter were among the first four baptisms in Korea, at Songdo Beach in Pusan on 3 August 1952. The other two new members were Brother Kim’s son Tai Whan and daughter Young Sook.
His oldest daughter, Jung Sook, was baptized in a swimming pool on the Soyong Army Post in 1953. “The water was warm,” she says, “but the weather was bitterly cold. Yet I was so happy I just didn’t realize how cold it was.”
Brother Kim invited investigators into his home for weekly discussions on the gospel. He translated for American Church members, and sometimes he taught the investigators himself. One Korean who attended several of these meetings heard Brother Kim say more than once that “the thing this wartorn land needed more than anything else was a spiritual rebuilding.”
While the number of Korean converts was gradually increasing, Brother Kim also found success in his secular pursuits. He was appointed president of the National Fisheries College at Pusan, which had become inoperative because of the war. Within a few months, he had it fully functional, an accomplishment that amazed many observers. During a celebration in his honor, Brother Kim told assembled parents and teachers, “I cannot accept any of the credit. I asked of God, and he is the one who accomplished the unbelievable.”
Blessed in leadership ability and with the humility to seek divine help, Brother Kim advanced quickly to other prestigious positions: dean of the College of Animal Husbandry at Konkuk University; president of Hong Ik College; chief Korean representative to UNESCO [the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization]; chairman of the Seoul Board of Education; and vice-minister of education for South Korea. He also authored several highly-praised scientific publications.
The social status Kim Ho Jik achieved is significant. Says Brother Han, “It was vital that such a politically and socially powerful person be involved in the establishment of the Church in Korea. Without Dr. Kim, [it] would have been delayed for a couple of decades.”
Indeed, approval of official legal status for the Church in South Korea appeared unlikely. “The name Mormon meant ‘heathen,’ ‘pagan,’” Brother Han recalls. Latter-day Saint missionaries were not allowed in Korea because “they were not recognized … as decent Christian missionaries.”
Brother Kim’s appointment to the Seoul Board of Education in 1956 proved fortunate, since all the city’s religious matters came under its jurisdiction. He personally took before the board a proposal for the Church’s incorporation in Korea. With his endorsement, it passed. “It was almost a miracle,” Brother Han says.
Kim Ho Jik also put his reputation on the line to gain permission for Latter-day Saint missionaries to enter South Korea, agreeing to be their financial sponsor and guaranteeing that they would do no harm to the Korean people. The first two full-time missionaries arrived from Japan in April, 1956.
Brother Kim’s positive influence on the first generation of Korean Saints was perhaps equal in importance to his impact on missionary work. Brother Han, a former president of the Korean Mission and the first Korean to serve as a regional representative, joined the Church as a high school student. In 1956, he began attending the branch where Brother Kim taught Sunday School. He remembers that “Dr. Kim was the unofficial patriarchal figure and spiritual leader for all the Korean Saints. His integrity was a great strength to new members and investigators. We would think, ‘If Dr. Kim says he accepts this principle, we don’t need to worry about his truthfulness or his sincerity.’
“Even though he was the vice-minister of education, he would mingle with us teenagers,” Brother Han adds. “No one would expect something like that in Korean society. A man in that kind of position in the government would never do things like that with lay citizens, especially people as young and poor as we were. But he … was not ashamed to be with his brothers in the gospel, regardless of age, race, social rank, title, or whatever.”
Brother Kim’s rapport with young people proved valuable, since so many of the new Korean members were high school or college students. Rhee Ho Nam, another early convert who went on to serve as a mission president and regional representative, comments, “His whole purpose became to teach these young future leaders of the kingdom of God in Korea.”
His former pupils say much of Brother Kim’s most effective teaching was through example. “Korean society was rough immediately after the war,” says Brother Han. “Every day you could walk home, since there was not much public transportation in those days, and in more than half of the houses you passed, you could hear noisy quarrels between hungry wives and their drunken husbands. But Dr. Kim was living a heavenly life—there are no other words for the way he treated his wife and his family.”
Kim Ho Jik once told a group of Korean Saints, “I wouldn’t care if I had to give up my life, or my money, or my title, as long as I could be with my Savior.” If any of his listeners doubted his sincerity, the events of his life proved his commitment to serving God.
Once, for example, the Korea Broadcasting System invited him to lecture on a topic in biology during a nationwide broadcast. “During the entire ten minutes he was on, he talked only about the Church,” says Pak Jae Am, a supervisor in the Presiding Bishopric’s regional office in Seoul. “It was just like he was talking in his Sunday School class.”
Brother Kim also made a memorably bold statement of dedication to his faith in an episode that almost seems drawn from the Book of Daniel. Korean President Syngman Rhee decided one Sunday that he urgently needed to consult with his vice-minister of education. After searching for several hours, the presidents’ secretary found Kim Ho Jik teaching his Sunday School class. Brother Kim refused to leave until he finished his lesson. President Rhee, notorious for his harshness, was irate. But Brother Kim calmly explained that he considered nothing more important than his Sunday School teaching assignment and felt obliged to finish it before responding to the president’s summons. President Rhee patted Brother Kim on the shoulder and said, “Well done.”
Brother Kim resigned his national post in July of 1956 “because I wished to dedicate more time and energy to our Church.” He had been president of the Yurak-Dong Branch, and he had become the first Korea District president in 1955, holding that position until his death. His work included translating several pieces of Church literature from English into Korean.
Brother Kim represented Korea at a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization meeting in India in August of 1959. Shortly after his return home, he met with Rhee Ho Nam, who noted that Brother Kim looked tired. Brother Kim replied that he had felt ill during the conference and was anxious to return home. Less than a month later, on August 31, he died of a stroke.
During Brother Kim’s funeral, “the presidents of nearly every university and college in Korea came around to pay their respects,” says F. Ray Hawkins, a missionary in Korea during the late 1950s who later became a mission president there. “Every single one of those men said that Brother Kim had personally, more than once, invited them out to church and had discussions about the gospel.” Brother Hawkins’s observation suggests a fitting epitaph: though he walked among the elite, Kim Ho Jik’s prestige was to him a mere tool for building the kingdom of God.
His service in the Church lasted only eight years, but his impact on its establishment in Korea cannot be measured. He was an exemplar of a new kind of Mormon pioneer, the kind who takes the gospel into new lands where the word “Mormon” is essentially unknown and the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not yet been heard.

When I was in high school, many of my friends started smoking. I was the only member of the Church who belonged to that group of friends. They knew that I am a member of the Church. One time they asked me why I didn’t smoke. I just smiled and humbly answered, “We know that the Bible says our body is a temple, and it is a special gift given to us. Therefore, we need to love and care for the gift given to us because it comes from God.” They responded by saying that maybe I was right and that we need to care for our bodies. I shared my testimony about the Word of Wisdom with them. If we show care for our bodies, we will be blessed with good health and knowledge. I knew because of the expressions on their faces that they believed what I had shared with them. Since that day I have seen an improvement in them. Sharing your testimony with those who struggle with smoking can help them to choose the right.
Michael T., 18, Palawan, Philippines

When Relan G. Macam (third child of Yolanda Gayatin and Reuel F. Macam of 39-F Tabayok, Sta. Mesa Heights, Quezon City) was born on September 17, 1975, his father and mother gradually fell away from the Church, after being members for only three months.
It was a situation difficult to understand. Both were active in the beginning. Ruel expressed spiritual joy to relatives present during his baptism at being born again together with Yolanda. He developed new interest and experienced excitement in reading and pondering upon the Scriptures. He avoided friends who were inclined to passing time with drinking and smoking sessions. Upon the birth of Relan, his life began to change. Sabbath day did not anymore provide him with a feeling of spirituality.
Home teachers called on the family, only to be turned away by Yolanda with the shallow excuse that household duties occupied her time and that Reuel was busy with provincial assignments. A group from the Elders Quorum of his branch paid a special visit, but Yolanda was prepared with the excuse that her husband was still in the provinces on business (he was in fact upstairs, impatiently waiting for the group to leave). As a last resort, the missionary elders who baptized them tried to bring them back to the Church—without success—as Reuel reverted to his old ways of smoking, drinking and carousing with friends.
Not long thereafter, strange occurrences began to disrupt the family life of the Macams. Relan became sickly, and his parents had to bring him to the hospital at frequent intervals. Unpaid bills and household expenses began to mount, and Reuel soon found himself heavily in debt. He, too, looked pale and sickly. The burden of motherly chores also exacted heavy toll on Yolanda, looking after the other kids in between hospital visits to Relan. Life for the two of them began to look like a trail of thorns.
Then, during one evening of soul-searching, Reuel was jolted by a thought in his mind. Could it be that son Relan was protesting in his cradle of innocence over the wayward life of his father? Could it be that Relan, in his guiltlessness, was telling him that turning his back to the covenant he made was not pleasing in the sight of God?
For, Relan had an extraordinary experience while still throbbing with life in his mother’s womb. On June 21, 1975, when Reuel and Yolanda were baptized by Elder Round in the Quezon City chapel, Yolanda was heavy with child, in fact, six months in the family way with Relan. This baby boy was immersed in the baptismal font with his mother even before he was born into this world!
The second day of January, 1977, a repentant father entered the Quezon City chapel. A cry of joy came from one of the members. “It’s Brother Macam, it’s Brother Macam! Welcome back!”
After having been away from the Church one year and three months, Reuel F. Macam returned like the prodigal son—silently nurturing the thought that his infant son, Relan, showed the way back.—P. Ocampo, Jr.
Editor’s Note: Bro. Macam is now Sunday School President, Quezon City III Ward, Quezon City, Philippines Stake.