Gospel Story Finder

A boy once told me he went to seminary at 5:00 a.m. I said, “That is super early. Why do you go?” He simply answered, “Because I want to. I love it. Seminary is the best part of my day.” His attitude was “I want to be valiant!” For him, obedience was a quest, not an irritation.

The formal organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the culmination of a sequence of miraculous experiences. The first of these experiences occurred 10 years earlier in upstate New York.
In the spring of 1820, a young boy named Joseph Smith went into the woods near his home to pray. He had questions regarding the salvation of his soul, and he yearned “to know which of all the [churches] was right, that [he] might know which to join.” Joseph trusted that God would answer his prayer and direct him.
Please note that Joseph did not pray merely to know what was right. Rather, he prayed to know what was right so he could do what was right. Joseph asked in faith and was determined to act in accordance with the answers he received.
“In [response] to his [sincere] prayer, God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph and inaugurated the ‘restitution of all things’ (Acts 3:21) as foretold in the Bible. In this vision, he learned that following the death of the original Apostles, Christ’s New Testament Church was lost from the earth.” Joseph Smith would be instrumental in restoring once again the doctrine, the authority, and the covenants and ordinances of the Savior’s ancient Church.
Joseph affirmed: “I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!”
Through this vision and subsequent supernal experiences, Joseph Smith came to understand that God and Jesus Christ knew him as an individual, cared about his eternal salvation, and had a mission for him to perform. He also learned vital lessons about the attributes, character, and perfections of the Godhead—and that the Father and the Son are separate and distinct Beings. Jesus Christ is the literal Son of God in spirit and in the flesh.
Joseph Smith declared that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are corporeal beings. He said, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.”
I testify the visitation of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith was the initiating event in the grand “restoration of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began.”

Three weeks later, on December 27, 1847, about a thousand Saints from settlements along the Missouri River gathered for a special conference. They had built a log tabernacle for the occasion on the east side of the river at a place later called Kanesville. The building was larger than any cabin in the area, but it could not hold everyone who wanted to attend.
Inside, the Saints sat shoulder to shoulder on hard log benches. Though the winter had been intensely cold so far, when the Saints arrived at the log tabernacle the weather was unseasonably pleasant. The day before, Heber Kimball had promised them that if they attended the meeting, they would have one of their best days ever and a fire would be lit that would never go out.35
On a platform at the front of the room, the apostles sat with the Winter Quarters high council. The meeting opened with singing and prayer, followed by sermons from some of the apostles and other Church leaders. Orson Pratt spoke about the importance of the First Presidency.
“The time has come when the Twelve must have their hands liberated to go to the ends of the earth,” Orson said, certain now of the Lord’s will. “If there is no First Presidency, it confines the Twelve too much to one place.” Reorganizing the presidency, he testified, allowed the Church to turn its eyes to the distant parts of the earth, where thousands of people could be waiting for the gospel.36
After the sermons, it was proposed that Brigham Young be sustained as president of the Church. The Saints then raised their hands in unison to sustain him. Taking the stand, Brigham proposed that Heber Kimball and Willard Richards be sustained as his counselors.
“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” he told the Saints. The road ahead would not be easy, but as the Saints’ leader, he would dedicate himself completely to fulfilling the Lord’s will.
“I will do right,” he promised. “As He dictates, so I will perform.”37

I felt nervous to go to a new school. I prayed for help. The Holy Ghost helped me be brave. Each day I felt a little less scared. Now I love going to school.
Lyla R., age 5, Alabama, USA

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

I’ve always made an impressive grilled cheese sandwich. Between that delectable dish and a handful of other recipes, I kept myself alive and functioning throughout my mission and well into adulthood. But then I got married and had kids, all of whom have different tastes. I needed to expand my menu!

However, on nights when it was my turn to cook, attempting new meals proved to be a challenge. For starters, my evening time was usually limited. Even though I wanted to cook a variety of meals, I kept hitting snags. I couldn’t find ingredients fast enough, or we’d be missing some. More often than not, I’d scrap my planned dinner and instead go for quick and easy.

And yet I kept wanting to improve in this area. So I decided to do something I had never done. I prayed for a spiritual gift by name.

Specifically, I prayed for the gift of organization. Yes, organization! We already had a spice cupboard. We also had cooking utensils drawers. Yet even with those in place, I seemed to spend more time looking for supplies than cooking.

As I consistently prayed for this gift, I began receiving specific ideas. A wall-mounted spice rack would organize spices and keep them handy. A magnetic kitchen bar (also wall-mounted) could store knives and other metal cooking utensils. These and other ideas, once put in motion, made a big difference in my cooking efforts. Need some thyme? Garlic salt? Garlic powder? I’m your guy!

But then a funny thing happened. Little ideas continued popping into my mind for small ways to better organize other areas of my life. For example, my three-level homemade laundry tower won’t carry my family to the promised land, but even Nephi would’ve appreciated the way in which I built it—by following promptings that came to me one piece at a time.

The spiritual gift of organization has improved my life and the lives of my family more than I would’ve ever guessed.

And it all came because I asked for it.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve joins the choir entourage, enlarged this day by the hundred or more Utahns joining Brother Jon M. Huntsman in the dedication of a factory in Armenia that will produce high-tech concrete to house homeless Armenians suffering from a 1988 earthquake. In appreciation for the service the Church rendered to quake victims, a plot of land in the city of Yerevan is given to the Church by officials of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve and Elder Hans B. Ringger of the Seventy express gratitude for the gift. The site will be used to construct a multipurpose building containing offices, a Church meetinghouse, and residences for Church volunteer workers helping to train Armenians in home construction.

Tiffany’s mother asked her to clean the sink in the kitchen.
To be like Jesus, Tiffany could:
forget to clean the sink.
clean the sink and wipe off the counters too.
clean just the sink, as her mother had asked.
Read Matthew 5:41. [Matt. 5:41]

Then gradually the thoughts of my ancestors who had walked this trail began to fill my heart. First it was Jared and Cornelia with their two-year-old son. I felt the chill in the air, but that chill was nothing compared to the freezing conditions Jared and his little family had experienced during their exodus. Cornelia died somewhere between Nauvoo and Salt Lake. I imagined Jared weeping as he picked up his son and continued on.
My heart began to swell with emotion; it felt as though Sarah had joined me. Jared and Cornelia with their little son were with me also. We walked together amid the light and shadow, past and present merging on this trail—this trail of hope, this trail of tears. In a way I can’t explain, they were with me and awakened in me our shared love of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I realized that my testimony burns in me because it had burned in them—passed from generation to generation—each laying the foundation for the next. I wept with gratitude.
Soon my husband, who had been photographing elsewhere, caught up with me. I stood close to him as I told him of my experience. He, like those Nauvoo Saints, was the first in his family to believe the gospel. And he, like those who had walked this trail more than 150 years before, would not be the last to believe. His testimony and mine nurtured the testimonies that now burn in the hearts of our children, just as the testimonies of Jared and Cornelia and Sarah nurtured the testimonies of thousands of their descendants.

I remember loading up our children in a station wagon and driving to Los Angeles. There were at least nine of us in the car, and we would invariably get lost. Instead of getting angry, we laughed. Every time we made a wrong turn, we laughed harder.

—As a high school student from Ashton, Idaho, Ryan Gardner, now 18, participated in a student exchange program.
“I spent a year in Finland. While I was there, I was constantly noticing furniture. I was amazed at how beautiful a simple thing like a chair could be. I fell in love with their textiles—there were so many wonderful fabrics. And it seemed like in every home there was some kind of beautiful glassware. The more I saw, the more fascinated I became.
“One family I lived with had completely remodeled their home, from the plumbing on out. They redid everything themselves. It was a small home, and what they did wasn’t anything that cost millions of dollars. But there was a simple elegance in how they tied everything together, from the kitchen to the stairs to the furniture. The result was beautiful.”
When he returned to the U.S., Ryan, who had previously thought about being an orthodontist, decided to major in interior design.

Recently three generations of a family were grieving at the death of a five-year-old boy. He died accidentally while with his family on a vacation. I was granted the opportunity to watch once again how the Lord blesses the faithful with relief and the strength to endure.
I watched the way the Lord made their great burden lighter. I was with them as the Lord’s covenant servant—as you will be often in your life—“to mourn with those that mourn … and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”5
Because I knew that was true, I was pleased and at peace when the grandparents invited me to meet with them and the parents of the little boy before the funeral.
I prayed to know how I could help the Lord comfort them. They sat down with me in our living room. I had warmed the room on a cold night with a small fire in the fireplace.
I had felt to tell them that I loved them. I told them that I had felt the Lord’s love for them. In just a few words I tried to tell them that I mourned for them but that only the Lord knew and could experience perfectly their pain and grief.
After saying those few words, I felt impressed to listen with love while they talked about their feelings.
In the hour we sat together, they spoke far more than I did. I could feel in their voices and see in their eyes that the Holy Ghost was touching them. In words of simple testimony, they spoke of what happened and how they felt. The Holy Ghost had already given them the peace that comes with the hope of eternal life, when their son, who died without sin, could be theirs forever.
When I gave them each a priesthood blessing, I gave thanks for the influence of the Holy Ghost that was there. The Comforter had come, bringing hope, courage, and increased strength for all of us.
The father and the mother of the little boy bore witness of the Savior that evening in my living room. The Holy Ghost came, and all were comforted. The parents were strengthened. The burden of grief did not disappear, but they were made able to bear the sorrow. Their faith increased. And their strength will continue to grow as they ask for it and live for it.

In addition to providing the Smiths a place to stay, Newel also gave the Church full use of the upstairs space in his store. At the Whitney store, Church leaders held meetings and the School of the Prophets.

Children can provide wonderful and often humorous insights into life. We have in our family identical ten-year-old twin sons. In some circumstances they are practically impossible to tell apart.

Recently we moved and found ourselves in new surroundings. Several days later I was talking to Aaron, one of the twins, and inquired about the big bump he had on his forehead. He described it this way. “Well, Dad, Lincoln [who is his older brother] was chasing me down the hall. I ran around the corner, and I saw my twin brother, Adam. Now, I knew I could outrun Adam, so I just kept running.” It turns out he ran into a full-length mirror!

The Trouble with Spitt The trouble with Spitt was that his creative imagination always got Kevin in trouble. The two of them were unlikely—but successful—missionaries, and Mr. Horvath probably would have died if Kevin hadn’t listened to the Holy Ghost. The author has written many favorite Friend stories.Vicki Blum8–12 years

A year later, Prince was ready to serve as a full-time missionary in the Kenya Nairobi mission.
“I can say missions change lives,” he says. During the time he served, there was a lot of persecution of the Church in Kenya, with anti-Church sentiments frequently being printed as newspaper headlines.
“As I walked the streets of Nairobi, I was many times accused of joining the Church for the sake of money”. A particularly difficult confrontation with a detractor became his turning point. That evening, he says, “I realized I had to pack my bag and go home or know for myself.”
Prince received his answer.
“For the first time, like the Prophet Joseph Smith, I could say I knew it, the Lord knew it and I could not deny that I was in the true Church.”

I had been admiring the new baseball glove in the sporting goods store for weeks, hoping that some day it would be mine. Every day on my way home from school, I took the long way and stopped at the store to look and wish. There were lots of other mitts there, but only one that was just right for me. That was the one I grabbed each day. I pulled it onto my hand, pounded my fist into it, and pretended I was in left field, waiting for that long fly ball.
Each time I walked into the store, I crept down the last aisle, almost afraid to look, for fear someone had already bought it.
I already had a baseball glove, but one of the seams was coming loose, and it was worn and scuffed. I was planning to make the Little League all-star team, and I figured that I needed the best mitt possible.
My birthday was coming up. I’d hinted to Mom and Dad a hundred times that it would sure be nice to have that mitt at the sporting goods store. They nodded and smiled, but they didn’t make any promises. I even took my dad into the store and showed him what a great glove it was. He agreed with me, but the morning of my birthday, the glove was still there.
After my birthday dinner, Mom brought in my presents and set them before me. Right away I could see that my baseball glove wasn’t there. I tried not to be disappointed, but it was hard. And then I got a real surprise. Brother Tice came back from his vacation early and paid me twenty dollars for taking care of his dog and mail and mowing his lawn and stuff. I had already saved nineteen dollars, so with Brother Tice’s money, I had enough to buy my glove now!
As soon as I finished the last of my cake and ice cream, I raced to the sporting goods store. The man was just getting ready to put the CLOSED sign in the window, when I burst in and grabbed the glove.
I had eighty cents left over, so on the way home I stopped at the drugstore and bought a half pound of cinnamon bears.
I left with three cents in my pocket, my new glove on one hand, and my sack of cinnamon bears in the other. I couldn’t have been happier.
That night, I propped up my new glove on the dresser so that it would be the last thing I saw before I went to sleep and the first thing I saw when I got up in the morning. And all night long I dreamed of playing in the all-star game.
The next morning was Saturday, and no one had to wake me. As soon as the first bits of light streaked across my room, I was up and getting dressed. I snatched my glove and bounded for the door, knocking half the stuff off my dresser. That’s when I saw my tithing can. My empty tithing can.
Suddenly I got a sick feeling inside. Mom and Dad had always told me to pay my tithing before I used my money for anything else. I had always remembered to do that—until yesterday! Yesterday the only thing I had had on my mind was getting my baseball glove.
I looked down at it. I looked over at the paper sack that had only three cinnamon bears left inside. I swallowed hard and figured out how much money I had stolen from the Lord. I’d received twenty dollars from Brother Tice, so I owed the Lord two dollars. Two dollars! Where would I ever get two dollars before Sunday?
Clutching my glove, I promised myself that the next time I had two dollars I’d give it all for tithing. I sneaked out of the house and tried to forget about everything except the all-star game.
When I reached the park and showed my teammates my new glove, they all said that they were sure that I’d be able to catch any ball that came to me. But the first time Rodney hit a fly ball in my direction, I missed it. When Charlie knocked a grounder my way, it slipped right past me. The guys said that I just wasn’t used to playing with a new glove, but I knew that that wasn’t the reason. I couldn’t stop thinking of the two dollars I owed the Lord.
While the other guys kept playing, I headed for home, dragged myself to my room, dropped my glove on the bed, and stared at my empty tithing can. Finally I got on my knees and said a little prayer, telling the Lord that I was sorry for taking His tithing and using it for my glove, and that I would pay Him back as soon as I could. But I still had that sick feeling inside.
Slowly I set my baseball glove on the dresser and pushed it way back. Then I set my tithing can in front of the mitt.
“Mom,” I asked as I walked into the kitchen, “do you have any work I could do?”
She was making bread at the kitchen table and looked up at me like I might be feeling sick. “I thought you were playing baseball with your new mitt.”
“I went,” I muttered, hanging my head down, “but I need to earn a little money.”
“You need more money?”
“Well,” I stammered, “I owe somebody else some money, and I forgot about paying up before I spent it all.”
Mom thought for a minute. “The garage needs cleaning. I suppose if you did a really good job there I could give you fifty cents.”
Fifty cents wasn’t a lot of money, especially considering how much work was to be done in the garage, but I didn’t care. I needed to square myself with the Lord.
For the rest of the morning I worked in the garage. I stacked all the boxes, straightened all the tools, swept the floor, and hauled out the trash. I’d cleaned the garage before, but never as well as I did then. When Mom inspected my work, her eyes got big. “Well, Justin,” she exclaimed, “I’ve never seen the garage look so good. I think that’s worth at least seventy-five cents.”
“Brother Tuckfield,” I asked my neighbor across the street, “do you have any work a guy could do?” Brother Tuckfield was digging in his flower bed. He looked up and wiped a big drop of sweat from his nose.
“I’m trying to earn a little money,” I explained. “I’ll work hard. And I don’t charge much.”
“Well, there are some weeds along the ditch bank in my backyard. If you’d chop those down for me, I could pay you twenty-five or fifty cents.”
There was a jungle of weeds along Brother Tuckfield’s ditch. I worked for over an hour, pulling and chopping and digging. Before I quit, there wasn’t a single weed left along that ditch bank. Brother Tuckfield gave me fifty cents, and I went down the street still looking for work.
Sister Caldwell needed trash hauled out to the curb. That was another ten cents. Sister Hadfield wanted the grass raked in her front yard. That was worth twenty-five cents. Brother Henderson let me pull the weeds in his rose bushes. I ended up with scratched hands and arms, but I earned twenty-five cents there, too.
I stopped by Brother Raymond’s home and helped him weed his garden. It was about the hardest work I’d done all day. I had to get down on my hands and knees and pick the tiny weeds among the carrots and the radishes. It was worth it when Brother Raymond pulled two quarters out of his pocket and dropped them into my hand. I’d finally earned enough money to make things right with the Lord!
When I finally headed for home, I was too tired and sore to do more than drag my feet over the hot sidewalk. I was thirsty and had two big blisters on my hand.
I passed the park. All the guys had gone home long ago, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking of baseball and the all-star game anymore.
I made my way to my room. The tithing can was waiting on the dresser, still empty. I poured my two dollars and thirty-five cents into the can, grabbed my new ball glove—the mitt that was honestly mine, now—and pounded my blistered fist into it with a satisfied smile.

They also have some fun talking about what MVP might mean for a family. Maybe it’s Most Valuable Parents—that’s what the children think of Mom and Dad. Maybe it means Most Valuable Prayer—that’s what family prayer feels like sometimes. But they finally decide that for them, it means Most Valuable Person—and they all agree that for their family, that is Grady.
“I love being with my family,” says Halle. “And I love being with Grady.” She says her little brother has helped all of the family to see from a more eternal perspective. “Someday,” she says, “when we meet Grady in heaven, he will be in perfect form. He’ll be strong and healthy and he’ll know so many things. I will want to ask him what he was thinking during his time on earth.”
“Brothers and sisters are like built-in friends,” Kamree says. “We’re here to help each other. I think Grady is here to remind us of that.”

When my children were teenagers and they sometimes did not want to attend Mutual or other meetings, I talked to them about their responsibility. I said that we don’t always go to a meeting for what we can get out of it, but for what we can give. I said often, “You need the Church, and the Church needs you.” New converts and less-active members need to feel needed because they are needed.

After my military service, I pursued an education in military administration in the West German government. It was quite demanding, but I gained a broad background in such things as finance, real estate, legal affairs, and so forth. I also had a calling to serve in the district presidency. While my fellow students were busy studying on Sundays, I was fulfilling Church assignments and spending time with my family. It was hard, but the Lord’s promises are true, and you can rely on them. I did as well as any of my fellow students.