Gospel Story Finder

From the first week they arrived in Utah they wanted to be involved in a family home evening at least once a week. So, on Monday nights they were invited into homes all over the Salt Lake Valley and enjoyed American family home evenings. But on Sunday nights they decided to get together and take turns giving the lesson to their own group. They made popcorn and usually ended the evening singing LDS hymns in Spanish.

A few years ago I stood on the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431. Young Joan of Arc, one of the great heroines in history, became the unlikely standard-bearer for the French army in the Dark Ages, long before the gospel was restored. Joan had the Light of Christ and also the courage to follow its promptings and make a difference. Joan was a peasant girl who could neither read nor write, but she was bright. Long years of war with the English had impoverished and divided her country. At 17, sensing her life had a purpose, she left home, determined to help liberate her oppressed country. Naturally, people scoffed at her ideas and thought she was a little crazy, but in the end she persuaded them to let her have a horse and an escort to go and see the king.

Young King Charles VII of France had heard about Joan and decided to test her. He slipped into the ranks of the army and let one of his trusted associates occupy the throne. When Joan came into the room, she barely acknowledged the man on the throne, but promptly walked up to Charles and curtsied to him as her king. This so impressed the king that he gave her command over his 12,000 troops. At first the French soldiers did not want to obey her, but when they saw that all who followed her succeeded and all who disregarded her failed, they came to look upon her as their leader.

Clad in a suit of white armor and flying her own standard, Joan of Arc liberated the besieged city of Orleans in 1429 and defeated the English in four other battles. Twice she was wounded, but each time she recovered and went on fighting. Her orders seemed to be those of a military genius. She marched into the city of Reims and stood with sword and banner in hand while Charles was crowned king. She fought in the Battle of Paris until she was captured at Compiègne by English allies, who sold her to the English for 16,000 francs. She was imprisoned, tried as a heretic, and then burned at the stake in 1431.

Although this is a sad ending, it does not take away from Joan’s greatness. She was courageous enough to follow the personal inspiration to which all of us are entitled. As the Lord said to the Prophet Joseph Smith, “I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

President Kimball qualifies as a friend of the Savior. When he was in the hospital ready to undergo open-heart surgery a few years ago, he was being wheeled down the hall and into the operating room by a young orderly. The young man accidentally smashed his finger between the metal door frame and the metal frame of the bed on which lay the already sedated prophet. When this mishap occurred, the young man, in pain, used an unfortunate expression in which he took in vain the name of the Savior. The prophet stirred, opened his eyes, and gently rebuked the orderly, saying, “Young man, don’t say that; He’s my best friend!”

“I’m not used to talking much,” Kim’s father began, “except to my cows. But I would like to say that I’m proud of my daughter. I don’t tell her that often, though. You see, I was raised in a very strict home. My mother died when I was younger than Kim, and though my father was a wonderful man, he believed that showing affection made you weak. I don’t remember that he ever hugged me in his life. I guess that’s why I feel awkward about showing affection to Kim. But I’d like to tell a little story that I hope will show that I do love her.

“Kim was born in the dead of winter, and she caught pneumonia when she was only two months old. I tried to do the household chores because her mother had to care for her constantly. One night it was particularly hard for her to breathe. I took my little girl in my arms and blessed her and prayed for her … as hard as I’ve ever prayed for anything. Then, because her mother was totally exhausted, I sat in the rocker next to the stove and put my baby on her stomach across my lap and rocked her all that night. The doctor came the next morning and said that my rocking her in that position had given Kim’s little lungs a good night’s rest and that he thought that she was going to pull through. So you see, my little girl is very special to me—she always has been, and she always will be.”

Let’s start with the assignment to be a ministering sister. Whether you have that assignment as a 10-year-old daughter in a family where the father has died, or as a Relief Society president whose town was recently affected by fire, or when you are in a hospital recovering from surgery—you have a chance to fulfill your call from the Lord to be His ministering daughter.
Those appear to be very different ministering assignments. Yet they all require the preparation of a powerful, loving heart, a fearless faith that the Lord gives no command save He prepares a way, and a desire to go and do for Him.
Because she was prepared, the 10-year-old daughter put her arms around her widowed mother and prayed to know how to help her family. And she keeps at it.
The Relief Society president had prepared to minister before the unexpected fire in her area. She had come to know and love the people. Her faith in Jesus Christ had grown over the years from having received answers to her prayers for the Lord to help her in small services for Him. Because of her long preparation, she was ready and eager to organize her sisters to minister to people and families in distress.
A sister recovering in a hospital from surgery was prepared to minister to her fellow patients. She had spent a lifetime ministering for the Lord to every stranger as if he or she was a neighbor and a friend. When she felt in her heart the call to minister in the hospital, she served others so bravely and with such love that the other patients began to hope she wouldn’t recover too soon.
In the same way that you prepare to minister, you can and must prepare for your call to be a leader for the Lord when it comes. It will require faith in Jesus Christ, rooted in your deep love of the scriptures, to lead people and to teach His word without fear. Then you will be prepared to have the Holy Ghost as your constant companion. You will be eager to say, “I will,” when your counselor in the Young Women presidency says, with panic in her voice, “Sister Alvarez is sick today. Who will teach her class?”
It takes much the same preparation for the wonderful day when the Lord calls you to an assignment as a mother. But it will also take an even more loving heart than you needed earlier. It will take faith in Jesus Christ beyond what has ever before been in your heart. And it will take a capacity to pray for the influence, direction, and comfort of the Holy Ghost beyond what you may have felt was even possible.
You might reasonably ask how a man of any age can know what mothers need. It’s a valid question. Men can’t know everything, but we can learn some lessons by revelation from God. And we can also learn much by observation, when we take the opportunity to seek the Spirit to help us understand what we observe.
I have been observing Kathleen Johnson Eyring for the 57 years we have been married. She is the mother of four boys and two girls. To date, she has accepted the call to be a mothering influence on more than a hundred direct family members and hundreds more whom she has adopted into her mother heart.
You remember President Nelson’s perfect description of a woman’s divine mission—including her mission of mothering: “As mother, teacher, or nurturing Saint, she molds living clay to the shape of her hopes. In partnership with God, her divine mission is to help spirits live and souls be lifted. This is the measure of her creation.”
As nearly as I can discern, my wife, Kathleen, has followed that charge, given to our Father’s daughters. The key appears to me to be the words “she molds living clay to the shape of her hopes … in partnership with God.” She did not force. She molded. And she had a template for her hopes, and to which she tried to mold those she loved and mothered. Her template was the gospel of Jesus Christ—as I could see through prayerful observation over the years.
Becoming a covenant woman in partnership with God is how great and good daughters of God have always mothered, led, and ministered, serving in whatever way and place He has prepared for them. I promise that you will find joy in your journey to your heavenly home as you return to Him as a covenant-keeping daughter of God.
I testify that God the Father lives and He loves you. He will answer your prayers. His Beloved Son leads, in every detail, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Russell M. Nelson is His living prophet. And Joseph Smith saw and spoke with God the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees in Palmyra, New York. I know that is true. I also testify that Jesus Christ is your Savior; He loves you. And through His Atonement, you can be purified and lifted to the high and holy callings which will come to you. I so testify in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Illustration by Emanuele Nicoletti Serra
As a child, I paid tithing faithfully without ever thinking of holding back the money for myself. But at 17, I faced a defining moment when I had to decide if being a full-tithe payer was really what I wanted.
As a senior in high school, I’d been working part-time at a fast-food restaurant for a year and a half. At the beginning of the school year, I’d convinced myself that I needed more time for homework, school choir activities, and the rehearsals and performances for a musical in which I’d received a small part at a local theater. So I quit my job.
I had always set aside my tithing as soon as I cashed a paycheck, but a few months before quitting the job, I stopped paying tithing. Instead, I unwisely used the money for other things, putting what was left in my savings account.
In late December, I had an appointment for tithing settlement with my bishop. It turned out to be a very uncomfortable experience. He asked if I was a full-tithe payer. I told him the truth—I was not. I think I owed about $65. I had twice that much in the bank, but I didn’t want to use any of it, because without a job, I needed money for gas, dates, and other “important” expenses.
I thought my bishop would simply encourage me to do better next year and make a note that I was a part-tithe payer. But no. He invited me to make a commitment to pay the Lord what I owed. I wasn’t expecting that, and I would not commit. I told him I’d think about it, but I had no intention of paying.
Over the next few days, strange things happened. Until now, the bishop and I had rarely seen each other except on Sundays. But that week, I saw him every day—at the store, at youth activites, and more. Each time he’d greet me with the same question: “Have you made a decision?” And my response was always the same: “No.”
After several days of these unusual meetings, I finally realized that the Lord was using my bishop as a reminder for me to do the right thing. In my heart I always knew what I should do, and finally, wanting to be obedient, I withdrew the tithing money from my savings account and paid all that I owed that next Sunday.
Even though I knew I’d done the right thing, I was still worried about having very little money in the bank for the rest of the school year—and no job.
Then came the phone call. Two days after I paid my tithing, the manager of the fast-food restaurant I’d worked at called me. She was desperate. Several employees had recently quit, and she pleaded with me to come back to work—immediately.
For a moment I didn’t know what to say. While I welcomed the job offer and the income it would provide, I hesitated to accept because the one negative aspect of the job during the year-and-a-half that I had previously worked there was the requirement that I work on the Sabbath. As a result, I had missed many Church meetings and activities.
Suddenly, as if reading my thoughts, my manager said, “And if you come back, this time you won’t be required to work on Sundays.”
Some might say this was just a coincidence, but I knew better. I accepted the job offer with the firm belief that the Lord was now blessing me for being obedient to His law of tithing.
I know the Lord used my bishop, who showed up day after day and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Ever since then, I’ve come to understand, in a very personal way, these words of King Benjamin: “He doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you” (Mosiah 2:24; italics added).
The author lives in Arizona, USA.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting with an elder in the mission field. During our interview, I inquired, “Is your father a member of the Church?”
He said, “No.”
“Is your mother a member of the Church?” he was asked.
He responded with a smile, “Just barely.”
I said, “Did your father want you to go on a mission?”
He answered, “No.”
“Did your mother want you to go on a mission?”
“She really didn’t care whether I went or not.”
“Who influenced you most in your decision to go?”
Without hesitation he said, “I did. I’ve always wanted to go, and I knew I could make a success of it.”
I looked into this young man’s eyes and said, “From what I hear and what I feel of your spirit, you will succeed.” He is a determined individual, one who months ago might have said, “My dad doesn’t care. My mother doesn’t care. Why should I care?” This wonderful missionary knows the importance of going forward and has the courage to continue in the paths that lead to happiness. He admitted to me that he once was lost, but now he definitely knows where he is going and how to get there.

I am a cross-country runner. One day before a race I had great fear come over me. This was an important race and I was afraid that I wouldn’t do well. I didn’t want to let my team down. I called my mom a little bit before the race began and told her how I felt. She began to sing the third verse of “How Firm a Foundation” (Hymns, no. 85) to me. The song reminded me that I should not fear, because God is with me. I repeated these words over and over in my head until my fear went away and I was able to run the race.

Ann:
“I love medicine so much, I’d practice it even if I didn’t get paid,” says Dr. Ann Osborn, a four-year convert who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford School of Medicine in California. She has a list of many accomplishments, including the fact that she was the Most Outstanding Woman in her 1970 graduation class, completing her studies one year ahead of the rest of the students. She graduated in psychology from Harvard, earned her M.D., and served her internship at the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. She recently returned to Stanford, where she’s a resident in diagnostic radiology and is fulfilling a National Institute of Health traineeship.
Ann tells of her conversion with gratitude, joy, and the warmest smile:
“Four years ago I was in medical school. I had a Latter-day Saint professor whom I admired very much. He won the teaching award, which was presented by the student body, year after year. At that time I was very disappointed with what I saw in the religious world. I was a Methodist and saw that religion itself had very little effect on people’s lives. One day I asked this professor, who was also my aquatic school instructor, why he was so happy. He told me it was because of his religion, and then he began to tell me the Joseph Smith story. I discredited the golden plates, not knowing what they were, but knew that there had to be something beneath a religion that influenced a Mormon’s life. He promised me that if I’d go to a Latter-day Saint service, I’d find a faith with wonderful depth. I did go and found a beautiful spirit there. I was moved in a way I couldn’t understand, and I lost my control. Feeling tears in my eyes made me angry because I didn’t have a handkerchief, but most of all, I didn’t want to feel that way. I walked out of the meeting, but something told me to go back. I was baptized two weeks later, after having the discussions. In eight months, my sister Lucy was also baptized, and my brother and his wife joined in February 1971. Incidentally, before my brother knew anything about the Church, he asked a Mormon bishop to officiate at his garden wedding because he respected him so much.
“I found myself studying Church history more than medicine. I felt like an infant with so much to learn. For what other reason do we learn as much as we can if not to help the Lord with his work? We need humility about our knowledge to admit that we really need him and can call on him.
“I enjoyed my internship at the LDS hospital very much. I was thrilled to work with physicians who were elders. They work in the intensive care unit with a bottle of consecrated oil. It creates such a different doctor-patient relationship. I chose radiology as my field because it’s an eight-to-five job; there’s very little weekend work, and it leaves plenty of time for family and Church. I look forward to a temple marriage and a family of my own someday.”

It was hot enough, Laura Jo imagined, to turn even a lizard belly-up in the sun. And the rocks in front of her rose higher than one of her Uncle Walton’s tall tales. But Laura Jo didn’t want to stop until she had scrambled down the other side of the butte so that she could leave her confusion and hurt feelings behind her at the schoolhouse on the flats below.
She knew that at twelve years old she couldn’t run away from her problems. But she was sure that if she could put some space between herself and her grievance—that at the moment being Sarah Greely—she could perhaps at least calm down about not being asked by Toby Dunlap to share his box lunch at the school picnic.
Maybe I sometimes wear old clothes, she thought as she followed the little crooked path up the steep slope, but that doesn’t mean I’m poor in the head! She made her way down the other side of the red-rock ridge to the big lightning-split cottonwood alongside Yellow Bird River. It was quiet there, as quiet as a prayer, just as a secret place should be.
Now, as Laura Jo gazed into the deep green water that glinted in the daylight, her disappointment seemed as deep as that river. Most of the kids were oblivious to her affliction by now—she was just another classmate to them. But Toby Dunlap was a new boy at school. In fact, today was his first day. It might have been the first time that he had seen gold ringlets as eye-fetching as Laura Jo Walker’s, because she was the one he had first approached to share his box lunch with.
That was before he knew about Laura Jo’s harelip. He tapped her on the shoulder, and halfway through his asking her if she would lunch with him at the picnic, Laura Jo turned around. Toby stopped, stared at her, then stated awkwardly that he suddenly remembered that he had already asked someone else.
It was only because Sarah Greely happened to be passing by, Laura Jo knew, that he ended up sharing his lunch with her. Still, Laura Jo had felt more unwanted than bad news. She leaned forward now and eyed her reflection in the inlet pond and for a moment wished that the girl looking back at her was someone other than Laura Jo Walker.
The sudden appearance of another face looming over hers in the water gave her a start. Then just as quickly she relaxed. It was Bishop Cole. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a smile as big as a wasteland sunrise, and the latter, the girl’s father said, went on forever.
“Sorry if I startled you, Laura Jo,” he said kindly. “It appears that you and I have a liking for the same spot.” He leaned his fishing pole against the trunk of the old cottonwood and set his creel on the ground.
“I didn’t know that you like to come here, too, Bishop Cole.”
The tall man with the forever smile sat beside her, pushed back the brim of his hat, and squinted across the deep, wide ribbon of green water. “Almost as regularly as the sun coming up in the morning!” Then he added, “Well, at least once or twice a week. Bishops are pretty busy you know.”
Laura Jo nodded. “Do you come here to fish?” she asked, not able in her low mood to think of anything more sociable to say.
“That I do, honey,” Bishop Cole returned. “And to think.”
“So do I—to think that is.”
Bishop Cole beamed. “It must mean that Heavenly Father put enough quiet here for both of us.” He regarded her for a long moment, and his look shifted to one of quiet concern. “Is there anything that I can help you with, Laura Jo? Behind those beautiful green eyes I detect a look that’s more out of sorts than a bee in a poked hive.”
“It’s that easy to tell, huh?”
“It’s part of a bishop’s calling to be able to sense those kinds of things.”
Laura Jo’s bottled-up emotions started to seep out of her eyes. She brushed at her tears and found a release in the bishop’s listening ear.
Late afternoon shadows were creeping out from behind the buttes when Bishop Cole pulled a pocket watch from his vest and checked the time.
“I’m sorry, Bishop Cole,” Laura Jo apologized. “I’ve taken too much of your time.”
“Not any more than I’ve taken of yours.” he reassured her. “I was just wondering if school is out yet—we don’t want your folks worrying about you.”
“It only takes me a half hour to walk home from school, bishop.” She stood up and brushed herself off. “It’s not any farther from here if I take that path over there.”
Bishop Cole stood up too. “Why don’t I take it with you, young lady? I’ll walk you home.”
“I’d like that.” Laura Jo beamed, then hesitated. “But you didn’t even get to fish yet.”
“One doesn’t always have to aim for rainbow trout to have fished. It just so happens that today I went fishing for the whys of a certain young lady’s fretting.” He pointed toward the little red-rock path skirted with spatterings of sego lilies as he added, “And I didn’t do too badly. Between here and your place, I’d like to talk to you about them and about a few of my feelings.” He removed two large sandwiches from his creel. “And maybe you can help me eat all this food my wife packed for me. There’s enough in just one of these sandwiches to last until the Lord’s second coming!”
Laura Jo smiled inside as well as out. Someone was sharing a lunch with her, after all. And not just anyone. Bishop Cole.
That night when Laura Jo brushed her hair before the small wall mirror in her attic bedroom, she smiled at the golden-haired girl looking back. She couldn’t remember everything that the bishop had told her on the walk back to her house that day. What she remembered most—besides the fact that a person is different only to the extent that she is herself and not anybody else, and that real beauty lies in one’s heart and soul—was that Bishop Cole was her friend. And she was his. He had taken time for her. She mattered. She was, he had said, “a precious soul in his eyes, in the eyes of her family, in the eyes of a lot of other fine people—and,” Bishop Cole had then testified, “in the eyes of Heavenly Father.”

Last year, the branch made its first-ever temple trip. For them the closest temple is in England. A temple trip is a huge undertaking. It’s expensive and until recently, the temple ceremony was not available in Icelandic.
Hanna describes the experience of being in the temple. “Everybody greeted us and everybody was so nice and warm. It’s like being in heaven. I wanted to feel that feeling always.”
During the time at the temple, the Icelandic youth spent time each morning and again in the afternoon doing vicarious baptisms. The names were from their own ancestry. Melanie couldn’t help wondering about the people she was being baptized for. “Will they accept it? Will they be happy? Will they be thankful for what I’m doing here? It wasn’t just a name; it was a person who had a life here on earth and a family.”
When they got home, the feeling of closeness they developed as friends continued. These teens love their country and love the Church. These days sacrament meeting fills their meeting room to overflowing, and they’re glad. The message of the gospel is spreading like a light throughout the land.

When I was 13, I was so cool. My shoes were always untied, and my pants could have fit twice as many legs as I had. The more average I appeared, the more popular I became. It seemed the most impressive thing I could do was nothing. At times I felt like doing something, but I rarely gave in, for I was cool.
In my life, I had a number of activities and abilities that I felt were anti-cool. Some of my “faults” were my ability to play the piano and get good grades. Perhaps my greatest hitch was my involvement in Scouting, seen by some kids at school as less than cool. After all, Scouts advocate doing a good turn daily. If someone asked about Scouting, I would quickly change the subject.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy camping and other activities. I just didn’t want my peers to know that I enjoyed such things. If that knowledge ever spread, I knew that my cool friends would begin drifting away.
As winter arrived, my troop helped with the Scouting for Food drive. The Scouts advertised the food drive and collected the food by going around neighborhoods, usually dressed in their Scout uniforms. I felt I could not possibly participate. Someone might see me, delivering a fatal blow to my popularity. My parents, however, decided I needed to go.
As I walked out the door that day, I made every effort to keep a negative attitude. I eventually concluded that I would simply stay low in the cab of the truck and pass the time looking over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t spotted by anyone of importance.
The other guys passed the time in between houses throwing snowballs, telling jokes, and goofing around. That’s how it started. A little crack in my armor began. Jokes that started out seeming juvenile and annoying began to give me the chuckles, and I returned snowballs with snowballs instead of cold glares. By the end of our route, I was laughing while riding in the truck and racing to pick up the most food. Fortunately, I completely forgot that such simple pleasures were “beneath me.”
When I got dropped off in front of my house, I said good-bye and jaunted cheerfully into the kitchen, completely forgetting about my earlier lack of enthusiasm. My mom asked me how it had been, and I replied, “I had a great time.”
Just after these words slipped out of my mouth, I realized what I had done. How could I have told my mother this, of all things? I quickly tried to cover my mistake, coming back with, “Well, it was okay,” hoping that perhaps she would somehow not remember my initial response.
Looking back on this experience, I gained a few things from it. My search for peer approval was ridiculous. I decided that acting cool all the time really wasn’t cool. It didn’t benefit anyone, and it wasn’t any fun. When I acted disinterested, life was unexciting. Enjoyment, as it turned out, was independent of popularity. Who would have thought that? I gave this theory a test during the next week of school by making an effort to enjoy life rather than ignore it. This test was a great success. I had fun.
My Scouting experience taught me that I controlled whether or not I enjoyed myself in any situation—or in life. Attitude really is everything.

Conversion didn’t come overnight for Elder Wakolo, and over the first eight years of the couple’s marriage, he met with many missionaries. “I completed the [missionary] discussions four times in eight years,” he said. “I have 24 missionaries.” It was a simple question from one of those missionaries about the name of the Church that changed his mind about baptism. “The Church needs to be named after its owner,” he said. “That was it for me.”

Life gets crazy when you’re a 17-year-old girl. High school crushes, geometry tests, weekend window-shopping at the mall, and late-night phone conversations all add up, along with the lifelong task of discovering who you really are.
My senior year in high school was quite an adventurous one. I sang in two choirs, performed with the high school dance company, participated in region and state drama, studied in Advanced Placement and college concurrent-enrollment classes, and dated. I felt like a typical high school student.
But there was one exception—my mother was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). The disease attacks the nervous system in the body. The brain sends messages to the muscles to move, but the disease prevents these messages from getting where they need to go. The result: a loss of the ability to move any muscles. It becomes difficult to eat, breathe, sit, stand, walk, talk, or do much of anything. It was so hard to see my mother experience this. We literally watched every muscle in her throat give out before she died.
She came home from the hospital on Mother’s Day, and that night she asked my brother and me to sing “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” (Hymns, no. 29). I made it through one verse and then collapsed in tears. The morning she died, we played a Mormon Tabernacle Choir CD. As she passed through the veil from one world to the next, the increasing emotion of the choir singing “The Spirit of God” (Hymns, no. 2) filled the room and accompanied our tears of grief and love.
There were two scriptures in particular that helped me through this difficult and life-changing period. The first is found in Alma 40:23: “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.”
This scripture strengthened me because I knew that when I see my mother again, she won’t have the weakened body she left this life with. She will be whole; she will be perfect.
She will be the mother I played with, prayed with, laughed with, and lived life with.
A friend sent me a card the day after my mother died, and inside was the second scripture: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
Ever since that trying period of my life, I’ve looked back on this scripture as a way to hold me up in times of trial, to keep me going in times of pain, and to comfort me in times of tears. This scripture touched my heart then and continues to do so today.

Following Joseph’s death, Jane lived with President Brigham Young’s family until the Saints fled Nauvoo. During that time, she met and married Isaac James, another free Black, who was also a member of the Church.

After the Saints left Nauvoo in 1846, Jane gave birth to a son, Silas, at Winter Quarters. When the first pioneers left Winter Quarters in 1847, the James family were in the lead company of the main encampment.

Jane’s family struggled during their first years in the Salt Lake Valley, and though they lacked even the most basic necessities, Jane shared what little she did have with her neighbors. When Brother Lyman, a neighbor, received a call to serve a mission in California, he left his family with few provisions. His wife, Eliza Partridge Lyman, wrote, “Jane James let me have two pounds of flour, it being half of what she had.”
Jane worked hard to provide for her family, spinning and weaving cloth, making her own soap, and raising a large garden. She also worked as a laundress to earn much needed cash. Just as it seemed the family was starting to prosper, Jane’s husband left them. Twenty years later, he returned and made his peace with Jane and the Church. Jane held his funeral in her home when he died in 1891.
Despite her meager earnings, Jane James donated to the building funds of the Logan, St. George, and Manti temples, as well as to the Lamanite Mission. When asked how she managed to care for her family and still contribute to the building of the kingdom, she replied, “I pay my tithes and offerings, keep the Word of Wisdom, go to bed early, and rise early. I try in my feeble way to set a good example to all.”
Jane died in 1908. President Joseph F. Smith and other General Authorities spoke at her funeral, praising her unwavering faith and commitment to the gospel.

How grateful I am that you are an example for my granddaughter. She can look up to you as someone who cares about everyone and goes out of her way to show loving concern. She told me that one day when you didn’t have a car, you walked more than a mile to her house with your small children to bring cookies.
“I was thinking of you and your mom and wanted to do something nice for you—just because,” you told her.

One night the “mules and horses took a notion they would go and accordingly they went.” The boys started in pursuit “but the night was so dark that we had to take the advantage of the lightning to tell us which way we were going.” When Zeb saw something move in the distance he tried to run to it. “At last I got lost in a swamp but managed, after much trouble, to get back to camp without finding the animals.” Next morning, on foot, the boys found the animals more than nine miles from the camp.

Harry de Leyer was late to the auction on that snowy day in 1956, and all of the good horses had already been sold. The few that remained were old and spent and had been bought by a company that would salvage them.
Harry, the riding master at a girls’ school in New York, was about to leave when one of these horses—an uncared-for, gray gelding with ugly-looking wounds on its legs—caught his eye. The animal still bore the marks that had been made by a heavy work harness, evidence to the hard life he had led. But something about him captured Harry’s attention, so he offered $80 for him.
It was snowing when Harry’s children saw the horse for the first time, and because of the coat of snow on the horse’s back, the children named him “Snowman.”
Harry took good care of the horse, which turned out to be a gentle and reliable friend—a horse the girls liked to ride because he was steady and didn’t startle like some of the others. In fact, Snowman made such rapid improvement that a neighbor purchased him for twice what Harry had originally paid.
But Snowman kept disappearing from the neighbor’s pasture—sometimes ending up in adjoining potato fields, other times back at Harry’s. It appeared that the horse must have jumped over the fences between the properties, but that seemed impossible—Harry had never seen Snowman jump over anything much higher than a fallen log.
But eventually, the neighbor’s patience came to an end, and he insisted Harry take back the horse.
For years, Harry’s great dream had been to produce a champion jumping horse. He’d had moderate success in the past, but in order to compete at the highest levels, he knew he would have to buy a pedigreed horse that had been specifically bred to jump. And that kind of pedigree would cost far more than he could afford.
Snowman was already getting old—he was eight when Harry had purchased him—and he had been badly treated. But, apparently, Snowman wanted to jump, so Harry decided to see what the horse could do.
What Harry saw made him think that maybe his horse had a chance to compete.
In 1958, Harry entered Snowman in his first competition. Snowman stood among the beautifully bred, champion horses, looking very much out of place. Other horse breeders called Snowman a “flea-bitten gray.”
But a wonderful, unbelievable thing happened that day.
Snowman won!
Harry continued to enter Snowman in other competitions, and Snowman continued to win.
Audiences cheered every time Snowman won an event. He became a symbol of how extraordinary an ordinary horse could be. He appeared on television. Stories and books were written about him.
As Snowman continued to win, one buyer offered $100,000 for the old plow horse, but Harry would not sell. In 1958 and 1959, Snowman was named “Horse of the Year.” Eventually, the gray gelding—who had once been marked for sale to a low bidder—was inducted into the show jumping Hall of Fame.
For many, Snowman was much more than a horse. He became an example of the hidden, untapped potential that lies within each of us.
As illustrated in the story of an old, discarded horse that had within him the soul of a champion, there is within each of us a divine spark of greatness. Who knows of what we are capable if we only try? The abundant life is within our reach if only we will drink deeply of living water, fill our hearts with love, and create of our lives a masterpiece.

Just before my eleventh birthday, British and Australian troops and American paratroopers liberated us. Our property had been confiscated in the civil war between the Dutch and the Indonesians, so we had no home to return to. We stayed in a refugee camp, waiting for my older brother to recover from cholera. My father had needed immediate medical aid and had been shipped to Holland with the wounded Dutch soldiers. He lived only a short time after the rest of us reached Amsterdam.
My mother was left to find what work she could to sustain herself and her six living children. Penniless, we lived in a tiny apartment furnished with old wooden boxes. Life was not easy, and although my mother longed to make our existence more comfortable, she did not have the means to do so.
On my sixteenth birthday, as I was cleaning out a closet, I came across Pop Mientje, safely tucked away on the shelf. She was dirty; she had been a victim of my airsickness in a cargo airplane, and she had been in the mud under me as we sought cover when our truck was shot at by the Indonesians.
I decided to clean her up. As I scrubbed her with a brush, her clothes, which were sewn to her body, disintegrated. Unwilling to abandon her, I began the job of reconstruction. But as I reached into the stuffing, it yielded more than soft cotton. Pop Mientje spilled forth the treasure she had carried all these years: diamonds, rubies, pearls, jade, and various rings. How had my old rag doll been made the guardian of such precious goods?
The discovery of the jewels changed our lives. The proceeds from their sale first brought us warm clothing and furniture to make our lives more comfortable. Eventually they enabled us to obtain higher education. The training I received because of Pop Mientje’s treasures meant better employment and higher wages, both in Amsterdam and later in America.

“Hurry up, Jared, or we’ll be late for church,” Mother called from the bottom of the stairs.
Rushing down the stairs and out the front door, Jared remembered that he needed his scriptures for Primary. Rather than taking the time to go back upstairs, he grabbed an old set from the living room bookshelf.
On the way to church, he flipped through the Bible to find his favorite scripture about baptism. He wanted to recite it in Primary opening exercises. He was surprised to find that the scripture he was looking for was already underlined in red and that there was a date written in the margin. “What happened on July 2, 1982?” he asked, reading the date.
Mother pursed her lips. “Let me think,” she said. “That was about the time Samuel turned eight years old. Why, I believe that was when he was baptized.”
Samuel was Jared’s big brother. He had recently married and moved to another state to go to college. Even though Samuel lived far away, Jared loved him very much and still felt close to him.
Jared turned to the first page of the Bible and saw Samuel’s full name printed in a child’s scrawl. Jared realized this must be the set of scriptures his brother had used when he was in Primary. And he must have had the same favorite scripture about baptism that Jared had now. That made Jared feel even closer to Samuel. Turning to it in Matthew 3:16–17 [Matt. 3:16–17], Jared carefully wrote his own baptism date in the margin next to Samuel’s.
He happily carried his brother’s scriptures to his Primary class. When the teacher asked the students to open their scriptures to Doctrine and Covenants 4, he discovered that there was a bookmark there. It was old and worn around the edges.
Jared turned it sideways so that he could read the words written on it: “Every young man should serve a mission.” He thought about Samuel’s mission to Mexico and about how he had begun saving money for it while he was still in Primary. Jared wondered if Samuel started his mission fund when he got this bookmark.
After Primary, Jared carried Samuel’s scriptures to sacrament meeting. He was glad when one of the speakers invited the congregation to read D&C 131:2 with him. Jared was not surprised to see that the scripture was already underlined. He also found a card there on which Samuel had written five reasons why he wanted to get married in the temple. Jared thought about his brother’s recent temple marriage. Samuel must have started planning to get married in the temple when he was my age!
When Jared got home from church, he wrote a letter to Samuel.
Dear Samuel,
Thanks for letting me borrow your scriptures today. I hope you don’t mind that I wrote my baptism date in the margin next to yours. I’ve always wanted to be just like you when I grow up, and now I know how I can start. I want you to know I am going to save some money each week for my mission. And after my mission, I want to get married in the temple. Thanks for being a good example to me your whole life.
Love,
Jared