Gospel Story Finder

Roger had been a valuable employee throughout his successful career. But company ownership changed, the workforce was reduced by 25 percent, and Roger’s position was eventually eliminated. Though he had not anticipated losing his job, he never dreamed he’d have a difficult time finding work as an engineer.

Roger’s former employer provided the assistance of a professional outplacement firm. The firm assured him that with his expert skills and valuable experience, unemployment wouldn’t last long. Although Roger dutifully searched the job market and distributed copies of his résumé, days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and Roger became discouraged. “I felt extremely frustrated, knowing I was capable and experienced enough to provide for my family, yet being unable to find an opportunity to do so,” he remembered. After more than seven months of unemployment, funds from Roger’s severance package were gone and the family’s savings were nearly exhausted.

After learning of Roger’s struggle, his ward employment specialist encouraged him to participate in the professional placement program at the Michigan Detroit LDS Employment Resource Center. A woman in attendance at the next weekly networking meeting was looking for employees to work in her manufacturing company. She was impressed by Roger’s valuable skills and experience. A job interview followed shortly thereafter and a job description was written specifically to fit Roger’s skills.

This ministering to others must not always be to our own. I am reminded of a time when, as a young missionary, I was stricken with yellow jaundice, which was known to us as “missionaries’ disease.” I was so deathly sick, I was afraid I would not die. A good woman, not of our faith, nursed me back to health. I felt she literally saved my life. That surpassing service to me was unpurchased, for she accepted nothing in return. I am looking forward to seeing her in another world if I should be worthy to go where she is.

The noise level in my biology class was rising rapidly. You could feel the students’ excitement for the Christmas break. The teachers couldn’t hold the students’ attention on this Friday afternoon. As a class officer, I had been working along with others gathering donations to give to families in need at Christmastime. That weekend we would shop for gifts and food and make the deliveries.
It was finally the big day. Divided into groups, we were given envelopes which contained the money that we were to spend on our assigned families. We were given just the ages of those we were to buy for, no names.
When we were finished shopping, we wrapped the gifts and piled the food into boxes. We soon found ourselves inside the vans that were taking us to the homes to deliver the gifts. After stopping out of sight of the home, we carefully and quietly spaced ourselves three feet apart. A signal was given quietly, and the presents went one by one through each of our hands until they reached the front step.
As I took a moment to look around, it seemed as if time had stood still. It was such a magical moment. The silence that penetrated that spot of ground was amazing. I wanted to capture that moment of peaceful, heart-felt giving. It was as if the group of us were angels doing the Lord’s work through secret acts of service. The dreamlike state I was in was quickly dimmed by a nudge. It was time to get into the vans. Someone rang the doorbell, and before we had a chance to leave, we were caught! The mother took one long look at the pile of gifts and food, and with a tear-streamed face said, “Thank you, thank you. Merry Christmas.” We darted off into different directions until we reached the van. Our teenage hearts were definitely filled with good feelings. We continued to deliver gifts for the next hour.

“I give up,” Sandy sighed sadly. “I can’t think of anything. I never can when it’s my week.”
It was Monday afternoon, and Sandy was in charge of the family home evening activity. Justin and Carol had the easy parts—the prayer and the scripture. The cupcakes Mom made for refreshments were already frosted and dotted with red sprinkles.
Just as Sandy started to ask her mom for an idea, Justin ran into the kitchen with his best friend, Stanley, right behind him. Justin bounced his basketball on the kitchen floor with one hand while his other hand reached out for one of the sweet-smelling cupcakes.
“No you don’t,” Mom said quickly. “If you take one and Stanley takes one, and if Carol comes home with her friends, the next thing you know, there’ll be a chain reaction and all the cupcakes will be gone!”
“Aw, Mom.” Justin frowned and bounced his ball back outside.
After he left, Sandy thought about what her mother had said. “What’s a chain reaction?” she asked.
“Well,” Mom replied, “it’s when one thing causes something else to happen, and the second thing causes a third thing to happen, and so on. It’s like a little bit of snow can be the start of a big snowball. You know—one thing leads to another.”
Mom’s explanation started a chain reaction of thoughts in Sandy’s mind, and suddenly she had a wonderful idea. She bounced over to the sink where her mother was peeling potatoes. “Mom, do we have to eat the cupcakes for family home evening?”
“I thought that was your favorite part. What did you want to do with them?”
Sandy grinned. “Can we give them away?” she asked.
“I suppose so. Why?”
“I can’t tell you now,” Sandy said mysteriously. “I have work to do.”
Sandy hurried to her bedroom and took out a pencil and some paper. Slowly and carefully, she made up a poem:
You can play the chain-reaction game;
It isn’t hard to do.
Next family night just hide some treats,
Like these we hid for you.
But when you make a special treat
And take it out to hide it, Don’t forget to run real fast—
And leave this poem beside it!
After Sandy made two copies of the poem, she ran back to the kitchen to wrap up two packages of cupcakes.
That night during family home evening, Sandy explained her chain-reaction game to her family. As soon as it was dark, they quietly hurried down to the Moffitt’s house with one package of cupcakes. They put it on the doorstep, rang the doorbell, and hid behind the bushes. Mrs. Moffitt came out and exclaimed happily when she found the surprise.
Sandy’s family went just as secretively over to the Stavros’s house on the next block and left the other package for them.
A few weeks later, while Sandy was helping Carol set the table for dinner before their family home evening started, the doorbell rang. Mom was stirring spaghetti sauce, so Dad went to answer the door. There on the doorstep was a fancy paper plate heaped with chocolate chip cookies. And taped to the top of the plastic wrap was a copy of Sandy’s poem!
Dad laughed. “Sandy,” he called, “I’ve discovered the best part of your chain-reaction game!”

My wife, María, and I were baptized in 1978, and we found great happiness in the true Church. In 1986 we were able to travel to the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple and be sealed to our three children for eternity.
In 1988 María became pregnant with our fourth child. She soon became very sick, and we worried how the illness would affect her and the baby. When we initially feared that María had suffered a miscarriage, a doctor assured us that everything was normal. But María’s health steadily declined. One day she mentioned she had a feeling she would soon leave this life. I’d had a similar feeling, but I told her not to think of such things.
In September, we went to the doctor for her regular checkup. The doctor decided to admit María into the hospital; our daughter was born soon after—a month early. Although the baby had respiratory problems, we knew her birth was a miracle.
My wife, however, experienced serious complications and had to be operated on twice after the delivery. She received a priesthood blessing and seemed to be progressing well. But just a month later, her health rapidly declined.
On our 15th wedding anniversary, María and I read the scriptures together, and she shared her testimony of the gospel with me and asked me to take good care of the children. Then she began to have difficulty breathing and could no longer speak. As I sat at her bedside, I prayed to the Lord that His will might be done. But still I felt desperate. I questioned, “Why take someone so young? Why must we be separated?”
Some branch members came, and we gave María a blessing. I don’t remember what was said, but at the end of the blessing, the desperation finally left me and I became calm. When she took her last breath, a great peace came over me. A soft voice whispered in my ear to remember the covenants we made in the temple when we were sealed. I knew I would see her again.
I share my testimony that God lives and communicates His love and comfort through the Holy Ghost. He does work miracles.

During this time I started going to church. I cried at my first sacrament meeting—I felt the Spirit so strongly! As I listened to the testimonies of others at that first fast and testimony meeting, I remember wondering if I would ever have my own testimony. Young Women was my favorite meeting. I loved being with other girls who shared my values and some of my interests and learning about how I was a daughter of God. I felt so much love at church.
That night, I asked Heavenly Father in prayer if joining the Church was the right path for me. My mind was filled with one word: John. I had never read much in the Bible, but I knew I’d find my answer in the book of John. I found John 14:6: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Christ was meant to be the way for me too.

One day, Spencer was looking through the local newspaper. He came across the name of a girl he had met briefly prior to his mission.
Spencer: “Camilla Eyring.” That’s the girl I’m going to marry!
This feeling was so strong that Spencer decided he had to meet her again. He arranged to be on the same bus as she was.
Spencer: I hear you’re a teacher. What do you think of Shakespeare?
Camilla: What an excellent question. It’s nice to have an intelligent conversation.
Spencer had hoped to impress Camilla—and he did. When he asked to call on her, she consented. But she didn’t expect him to show up unannounced.
Camilla: Spencer! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.
Spencer: You look lovely, Camilla.
Camilla: Don’t be silly. Give me time to get properly dressed.
Nevertheless, the two began dating. Spencer would pick Camilla up every day from her job and drive her home over five miles of potholes, dust, and gravel.
Camilla: You don’t have to pick me up. I can take the bus.
Spencer: But I want to. It gives me more time to talk with you.
Soon the two were very much in love. They decided to marry. Camilla’s father, who rarely approved of the boys who courted his daughters, gave his hearty consent.
Edward Eyring: You are a fine boy from a fine family. I’d be honored to have you as a part of ours.
Spencer: Thank you, sir. I love Camilla and will always treasure her.

“Today we’re going to start raising butterflies,” our den mother, Sister Sills, said.
“Butterflies!” whooped my brother, Danny. He jumped up and ran in a big circle, waving his arms as if they were wings.
“Danny,” I hissed. “Sit.”
Danny stopped and looked around. Everybody else was sitting down, so Danny sat down, too. But he kept flapping his arms.
Sometimes it’s really embarrassing to have Danny for a brother. He’s actually two years older than me, but he was born with Down’s syndrome, so he doesn’t do everything at the same age as everyone else. Danny just waits until he’s ready. That’s why he’s in my Cub Scout den.
I love him, and I try to help him, but sometimes I get mad because he’s so slow at everything. Danny never complains when I do things without him, but he looks sad. I don’t like him to be sad, so I try to be patient with him.
Sister Sills explained how we were going to raise our butterflies. Then we made butterfly houses—shoe boxes with plastic windows and air holes. We also filled clear plastic cups with chopped green leaves that Sister Sills called “caterpillar food.” We called it “green goo.”
The caterpillars were so small that Sister Sills used a paintbrush to put them into our cups. We put a lid with air holes on the cups.
“That’s a butterfly?” Danny asked.
“It will turn into a butterfly, Danny,” Sister Sills told him. “Then it will fly.”
“Wow!” Danny exclaimed.
We each took two caterpillars home. Those little things ate and ate. We had to add more chopped leaves. I couldn’t believe how fast they grew. Finally they hung upside down from the lids of their cups and shed their fuzzy skins. It was like watching someone wriggle out of a very tight snowsuit. Underneath was a smooth, green chrysalis (a covering that shelters the caterpillar while it turns into a butterfly).
We moved the lids with the chrysalises attached to them to our butterfly houses and waited and waited for nearly two weeks. Danny was the first one to notice when something happened. “I got a butterfly!” he squealed. Then he ran around the room flapping his arms. This time, I just let him.
During the next day, all four butterflies emerged. We watched them exercise their new wings, and we fed them sugar water sprinkled on flowers for three days. Then we took them outside to set them free.
At first, the butterflies didn’t know what to think of the sunshine and the wind. Then one took off, and then another and another. We watched them flutter around our yard until they were out of sight.
When we looked back down, there was still one butterfly left. I gently picked him up on my finger. “Fly,” I ordered. But the butterfly stayed perched right where he was.
“I don’t think he can fly,” Dad said, looking closely. “He’s missing part of his wing.”
Mom bent down to look. “He has only four legs,” she said. “He’s supposed to have six.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“I think we’d better keep him,” Dad said. “He’ll get eaten by a bird or something if we leave him out here. He probably won’t live very long, anyway.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Danny said.
I wasn’t sure about that. Sometimes Danny breaks things because he has a hard time being careful. I didn’t think he could take care of something as tiny as a butterfly without squishing it. But Dad said, “Let him try.”
Every day, Danny fed the butterfly. And every day he took it out for a walk. “Butterflies don’t need walks,” I said.
“My butterfly does,” Danny said. “He needs to learn to fly. Sister Sills said so.”
“That butterfly is never going to learn to fly. He’s missing half a wing,” I pointed out.
“It’s OK,” Danny said. “He’s trying.”
That’s what Danny always said when the poor butterfly waved its wings. I couldn’t believe how patient and gentle he was. Every day he took the butterfly outside on his finger to exercise its wings. Sometimes it stepped out onto a flower to eat.
Then one day, in a puff of wind, the butterfly flew off Danny’s finger and circled the apple tree twice before landing in the grass. There it fluttered helplessly until Danny picked it up. But as soon as he did, it spread its wings and tried again.
“He flew!” Danny exclaimed. “He flew! He tried and tried, and he flew!” I’d never seen Danny so excited.
Danny took the butterfly outside to fly every day until it got old and its wings lost so many scales that you could see right through them. Finally it died. Dad helped Danny bury it. I was afraid Danny would be really upset, but he wasn’t. He was smiling. “Heavenly Father will give my butterfly new, strong wings,” he said, “because he tried!”
I still get impatient sometimes when Danny is slow or he forgets how to behave or he does something really silly. But when I do, I remember how kind Danny was to that poor butterfly and I say to myself, “It’s OK—he’s trying.” I figure if I work really hard, I can be as patient and kind as Danny.

Of course, many times we are only seed planters; we may never know, in this life, if they sprouted and bore fruit. For instance, on my way back from a recent serviceman’s conference, I was flying in the Philippines from Baguio to Manila and was delayed in the airport. Two French ladies who spoke no English were lost there, so I went to them and asked, “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? (Where are you going?) Quel est votre (What is your) destination?” It was the same as mine—Manila—so we talked while we were waiting for the plane. They naturally wanted to know why I was traveling to the area so I explained to them about the Church—not about the celestial kingdom and the Angel Moroni, but about how the gospel teaches patience in inconvenient circumstances and why the gospel made me happy. I left them my card and an invitation to contact the missionaries, but I have no way of knowing what will come of that seed-planting.
In one way, it does not matter and I do not need to know—my happiness comes from telling them about the gospel and feeling the Spirit of the Lord helping me. And that happiness is something I can feel every single day if I ask for it.

Which would you rather do: Spend a day cruising the San Francisco Bay on a ship, or clean up a house in your neighborhood so that needy families can use it? Seems like a no-brainer, right? A hot summer day calls for some rest and relaxation. Case closed.
Closed, that is, unless you’re a priest or a Laurel in the Manteca California Stake. They gave up a planned one-day cruise to join with the younger youth to paint and clean a house designated for families that are getting back on their feet financially.
Okay, okay. So they helped. But they probably didn’t have a very good time, right?
Wrong again. Outside, young people doing yard work trimmed bushes into smiley-face designs. Inside, they raced to see who could clean up the fastest. All of the youth made the projects into games and had a good feeling about what they were doing.
“I could really feel the Spirit there, and I knew I was doing the right thing,” says participant Cherie Farnes.
Apparently, town leaders agree. The activity was covered in a local newspaper article, and an editorial urged others to follow the lead of the youth, saying, “The project shows what can be accomplished by volunteers who are committed and organized.”

When the Young Women of the Merthyr Tydfil First Ward, Merthyr Tydfil Wales Stake, learned the chapel of another denomination nearby was in peril, they stepped in to help preserve it.
“The people who use it are mostly older, and they couldn’t afford to have it redone,” explained Natalie Davies, 17. “Unless we helped out, they would have to close it down, and it’s quite a piece of history in this area.”
So the LDS Young Women spent time scraping walls and painting the interior of the old stone building.
“We didn’t expect to enjoy the work,” Natalie said. “At first everyone groaned and said, ‘Oh, we’d rather be playing rounders’ (a British game similar to baseball). But when the older people started saying ’thank you for coming,’ we felt really good. They were so appreciative.”

Mary Jane took a deep breath and smiled as she hurried along the muddy path on the way home from school. It was springtime in the year 1852, and a soft, cool breeze was blowing over the Irish Sea.
She was remembering that warm feeling when a gust of wind blew a strand of her long black hair across her face. Mary Jane pushed it back. “I wish I had a pretty blue ribbon to tie my hair back,” she thought.
Just then, Mary Jane almost stepped in a puddle on the path. As she started to walk around it, she saw something bright in the water. She stopped and looked closely. It looked like a coin.
Finding a long stick, Mary Jane carefully raked out the coin. And it was a valuable one. “Lucky me!” she thought. “What should I buy with it?” Then the wind reminded her. “A long blue ribbon,” she thought. “That is what I will buy.” Slipping the coin into her pocket, she hurried home.
When she opened the front door, Mary Jane saw that the missionaries were visiting her family. The younger children were sitting quietly, and a reverent feeling filled the room. Mary Jane’s family loved the missionaries, who had come all the way to Ireland to bring them the gospel. Father said the missionaries came without purse or scrip. That meant they came without money and with only the clothes they were wearing. Today they had brought good news. Some other families in the village were going to join the Church!
Mary Jane’s father invited the elders to stay for supper. As they gathered around the table, everyone was smiling. Mary Jane liked to hear the elders ask for a blessing on the food. It gave her a “Sunday feeling.”
After dinner, Mama served dessert in the parlor. She had baked a cake and made candy frosting. As one of the elders sat down and stretched out his long legs with his shoes turned upward, Mary Jane and her father looked at each other in surprise. The soles of the elder’s shoes were worn through with large holes.
Father went to the kitchen, and Mary Jane followed him. Father reached to the top shelf of the cupboard where they kept money. But as he looked at the coins in his hand, he had a sad face. It was not enough to buy a new pair of shoes for the elder.
Mary Jane reached her hand into her pocket and placed her coin in Father’s hand. “Now is there enough?” she asked softly.
Father looked surprised. He was silent for a long moment. Then in a husky voice he answered, “Yes, dear. That is just right.” Father put his arm around Mary Jane, and she had the same warm feeling she had felt at her baptism.

Kasey was a good student. She knew this because her kindergarten teacher had moved her from the red reading group to the blue one, the top reading group in the class.
But now Kasey would be starting first grade. What if the work was too hard? What if she wasn’t one of the best students in her class anymore? If there were reading groups in the first grade, Kasey wanted to stay in the top group.
On the first day of school, Miss Nelson handed out a spelling worksheet. “When you’re finished, put your paper in the basket on the counter,” she instructed.
Kasey worked hard. When she stood to hand in her assignment, she beamed. The basket was empty. She was the first student finished! Maybe first grade wouldn’t be so hard after all.
Kasey soon discovered that Miss Nelson’s class did spelling assignments every morning. And for several weeks, Kasey was the first to finish. “I must be the best speller in class,” she told herself.
One day, she noticed her friend Shantelle march over to the counter and plunk her worksheet in the basket. Kasey’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t even half finished with hers! She filled in the rest of the answers quickly and sauntered over to the basket, sliding her assignment under Shantelle’s. Maybe Miss Nelson wouldn’t notice who had finished first.
On Monday it rained. Thunder crashed outside as raindrops drummed on the window. “After we do our spelling, we’ll have morning recess inside,” Miss Nelson announced. “When you finish your assignment, you may go pick out a puzzle or a game from that shelf. Please copy our spelling list for the week.” Miss Nelson pointed to the board. “Then write each word four times.”
Kasey’s wrist ached as she scribbled down the words. Her pencil tip snapped, but she kept writing with the dull end. Her heart thudded. She wrote faster. Finally she blew out a little puff of air as she triumphantly placed her paper in the empty basket. Kasey scurried to the shelf and chose a puzzle of a kitten snoozing in a flowerbed.
Kasey had just found all the corner pieces when she felt someone standing next to her. “Can I help?” Shantelle asked.
Kasey gulped. “Sure.”
Shantelle pulled up a chair and started sorting out the pieces with straight edges. She and Shantelle had spent recess together lots of times, but for some reason today Kasey felt nervous. She had been so busy trying to beat Shantelle lately that she hadn’t taken the time to be very nice to her.
“I saw your spelling assignment,” Shantelle said. “It was kind of messy.” Shantelle seemed surprised—it wasn’t like her friend to be so sloppy.
Kasey’s cheeks burned. She stared down at the puzzle pieces, finishing the puzzle in silence. All day, Kasey worried about what Shantelle had said.
At the end of class, Miss Nelson returned the spelling lists. “Use these to study for the quiz on Friday,” she said. She raised her eyebrows as she handed Kasey her paper. “Please write more neatly next time,” she said. She had circled all the words that were difficult to read. Suddenly Kasey didn’t feel so smart.
Before the bell rang, Kasey pulled out a new sheet of paper and began copying the words from the board again, this time writing as neatly as she could. That way she would know the right way to spell them when she studied the list later. The best student would try to spell the words correctly, she decided, not just copy them quickly.
The next day Kasey didn’t watch the basket while she worked. She looked straight down at her spelling worksheet and thought hard about the questions. She wrote the answers neatly in the blanks. When she finally turned in the assignment, she decided to be honest. She placed it on top of a small stack of papers already waiting there. Miss Nelson smiled at her. Kasey smiled back. She knew in her heart that now she was becoming the best student she could be.

Amaru Anderson, 16, often reads the scriptures with her 8-year-old brother, Sebastian. She also takes time to answer his questions, and prays with him regularly.

“We’ve been reading Joseph Smith—History once or twice a week,” she says. “It’s mind-blowing how many questions he has at eight years old, and I love answering them. I feel like I know him so much better.”

For example, one time Sebastian asked Amaru: “How do you think Joseph Smith kept going if all these people were doing all these bad things to him and to his family? All those things were going wrong, and if he was so good, why were so many bad things happening to him?”

“It really touched me,” she says. “I know that adversity strengthens you, but here’s a little boy asking me this hard question. We always read before he goes to bed, and I stay up a little later to get ready for the next day. I thought about our conversation and realized that I understood more about adversity from answering his questions.”

In February 2016, the full-time missionaries began visiting us. At first Pat thought they were coming over to help on the farm. When we accepted an invitation for them to teach us, he thought the lessons were just for the children.
As the missionaries were preparing to teach us their first lesson, Pat went out to work on the tractor. After about 20 minutes, I could see that they—two sisters and two elders—were deflated. At that moment, I felt that I should get Pat and ask him to come listen for a couple of minutes.
Later the missionaries told me that they had been praying that that’s what I would do. They knew that Pat needed to hear what they were teaching.
After the missionaries had taught us for several weeks, Jesse, Bo, and Frank wanted to be baptized. Pat thought that was great, but he felt that he was “beyond salvation.” That was before he met Von and Glenda Memory and heard Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speak during general conference.
When we saw Brother Memory at church, I recognized him from when I was a child. He was now serving as the ward mission leader. Pat introduced himself, telling Brother Memory that he really wanted the Church for our children.
“That sounds good,” Brother Memory said with a twinkle in his eye. “We’ll do it for the children.”
A few weeks later, after a lesson from the missionaries on the plan of salvation, Brother Memory said, “Boys, we’re going to talk about your baptism.” Then he added, “And then we’re going to talk about your dad’s baptism.”
Pat said OK, but his doubts about his readiness and worthiness persisted until general conference that April.
“You may be afraid, angry, grieving, or tortured by doubt,” Elder Uchtdorf said in his talk. “But just as the Good Shepherd finds His lost sheep, if you will only lift up your heart to the Savior of the world, He will find you.”1
Pat said: “Before then, it hadn’t occurred to me that I really could be a part of this, that I was worthy of salvation. But after listening to Elder Uchtdorf, it hit me that it wasn’t too late for me. I actually have a shot to get to heaven. I had never felt anything like that. From then on I knew. This is the Savior’s Church. We found it. I got baptized and received the priesthood. A week later I baptized my boys. When our girls were old enough, I baptized them.”
A year later, we were sealed in the Birmingham Alabama Temple.

The day after his arrival in the valley, after a restful night in the home of the Edward Stratton family, friends of the Blairs who had immigrated a few years before, William sought out a cobbler. As he waited for his boots to be mended, he relaxed and played merry tunes on his tin whistle, tunes he had undoubtedly played many times while crossing the plains.
When the cobbler finished, he handed William the old boots made new and asked, “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Didn’t you just arrive?”
“Yes, sir. How much do I owe you?”
“There’ll be no charge; just play me another tune on your whistle.”
William gratefully placed the handkerchief of money back in his pocket, the money his mother had so delicately given him many, many nights ago, and played the whistle like it had never been played before.

You may have noticed children on their way to Primary with their scriptures in hand. Primary children this year are being taught from the scriptures, and they are learning to use them. Our theme for sharing time is “I Know the Scriptures Are True.” One Sunday morning I visited a Primary sharing time, and I noticed the children had their scriptures open on their laps. The Primary presidency and the teachers were helping them find stories of the prophets in their scriptures. I was asked to share a favorite scripture with the children. When I finished, a little four-year-old girl on the front row held up her scriptures and said, “That scripture is in my scriptures too.” Through the guidance of loving parents and dedicated teachers, small children can become familiar with the scriptures and the spirit that accompanies them.

A day away from the deadline of the indexing campaign for the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, the young single adults from the Barbados Bridgetown Mission joined the indexing effort as part of their historic trip to the Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple.
On the eight-day trip that began July 20th and ended on the 28th, they participated not just in daily visits to the temple but also in different learning experiences such as this.
Helping the area achieve the goal of indexing 800,000 names from civil records for the Church’s family history archives was an added bonus to the experience of coming to the temple for the first time.
Under the direction of the Caribbean Area Presidency and with inspiration from Elder Quentin L. Cook’s visit, Elder Claude Gamiette brought together the joint forces of the young single adults from the Barbados Bridgetown Mission to “strengthen the membership of the Church among them as future leaders.”
With the help of Brother Gerald Kahne, a newly called indexing director for the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo Stake, these young single adults also began their indexing experience for the first time.
Brother Kahne shares, “This is a tool that helps people connect not only to their ancestors but also to the history of the lives of people they would not get to know if it had not been for this experience.”
The YSA came in one by one, sat on their designated seats, and began to explore their assignments. Many had never indexed, and some hadn’t even opened a FamilySearch.org account.
Many expressed their struggle to understand the process at first, but their satisfaction at being included in this project was evident as the first 100 names from the U.S Indiana World War II draft registration cards from 1940–1945 were completed.
Brother Kahne, who assisted the young single adults in the process, understood their concerns and worries.
‘When I did indexing for the first time, I was a member of the ward that had done the most indexing. I remember about 100,000 names had been indexed in Belgium, but I thought it was an experience that older people did in dark rooms with microfilms, so I thought that it was boring—until I started. I understand now that if someone had invited me, I would have done it before. Today I know that everyone should have this experience. I have seen so many people return to the Church and many who have become friends of the Church and have received so many blessings because of indexing,” he said.
The satisfaction expressed by Zariah Inniss, a 21-year-old youth Sunday School teacher from Barbados, as she finished her experience was infectious. A consistent smile never left her face throughout the process as she looked at the screen with an expression of joy from the work done.
“We feel grateful for this activity, for the enthusiasm that we felt at the end of the day after helping bring families together on both sides of the veil that will later become cards for ordinances in the temple,” said Brother Rufino Díaz, family history manager for the Caribbean Area.

Scott Hall is an unusual young man. His father, Garth, is an assistant coach for the Brigham Young University football team.
Recently Scott asked his mother for a white shirt.
“But you have all of these other beautiful colored shirts. Why do you want a white shirt?” asked his mother.
“I just have to have a white shirt,” he said.
“But why?” his mother asked.
Scott replied, “I can’t be a missionary without a white shirt.”
Scott is two years old.

The first year the party was held, only the Primary children and their parents were invited, but about halfway through that evening the young people realized they were leaving out almost half the children of the neighborhood. The next year everyone under 12 and their parents were invited. “This year we brought nine nonmember neighbors,” said Adrienne Brantzeg, a Laurel. Two of those were six-year-old Martin Seraphin and his mother who had recently moved with their family to Salt Lake City from New Jersey. “He’ll remember this until he’s 43,” Mrs Seraphin said of her son. “I can’t believe there are young people who would go to all this work just to serve the neighborhood children.”