Gospel Story Finder

It was a dry year when Mona and George Dunn decided to grow sugarcane on their farm near Lautoka. After six weeks without rain, the Dunns and the contractor whom they had hired to plant their crop feared that the seedlings would not survive. Brother and Sister Dunn and their sons fasted and prayed. As they returned from church the next Sunday, they met the contractor. “You are very blessed,” he said. “It has rained just enough to keep your cane alive.”
Later, when their water tank had nearly run dry, the Dunns again prayed for rain. As they sat on their veranda a few nights afterward, they saw a patch of clouds. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if it poured right now?” said Sister Dunn.
“It will,” replied her husband.
And it did. The storm filled their tank to overflowing—but did not wet the road leading to their home.

“There it is,” I whispered to Randy as we watched the magpie glide through the air and land in the poplar trees just this side of Jed Franklin’s place. We clutched our rocks and glared at the shiny black bird with the white tips on its tail and wings. Dad had said that he didn’t like magpies eating our vegetables, so Randy and I had chased it out of the garden. Chasing magpies was lots more fun than weeding.
“Do you think we ought to follow it over there, Russell?” Randy asked.
I thought about going back to the garden to finish weeding. I scratched my head. “Dad said that if they’re not chased miles away, they just come back.”
Randy swallowed. “But it’s on Mr. Franklin’s place now.”
I shuddered just a little. Jed Franklin was the meanest man I knew. He lived alone on a little run-down farm just down the road from us.
“I figure we can sneak over there through the trees without his seeing us,” I whispered.
Before Randy could answer, I started down the dirt lane toward the Franklin place. I heard Randy scramble after me. The magpie was still in the poplar tree when we got there. We each threw a rock.
“We didn’t throw close enough to it,” I muttered as I watched the magpie fly away, then perch itself right on top of Mr. Franklin’s new light pole. “We can chase it a lot farther away from there,” I said excitedly.
“But, Russell,” Randy gasped, “we can’t go into Mr. Franklin’s yard!”
I started ahead and suddenly grinned. “He’s not even there. His truck’s gone.”
A few moments later Randy and I were hunched down by the corner of Mr. Franklin’s barn, looking almost straight up at the magpie. “Be careful,” I said.
I don’t know which rock went where. All I know is that we shattered Mr. Franklin’s new light! Glass flew everywhere.
We ran for home—past the poplar trees, across the dirt lane, and to the garden, where we should have been all afternoon. We grabbed our hoes and started chopping weeds as fast as we could. Even when we were finished, we kept looking for weeds where there weren’t any. And every few minutes we glanced toward the Franklin place.
It was almost suppertime when we heard Jed Franklin’s old truck rumble down the road past our place to his. We didn’t dare stay in the garden after that. We put our hoes away and went into the house.
That night after we’d gone to bed and should have been sleeping, I lay on my pillow with my eyes wide open and a thousand things going through my mind. When I’d said my prayer that night, the words didn’t seem to go anyplace. They just stayed in the room with me. “Are you awake?” I whispered down to Randy, who was on the bottom bunk.
Randy kicked his covers back and muttered, “Yes. I can’t go to sleep. I keep thinking.”
“We didn’t mean to do it,” I argued. “It was an accident.”
“I know,” Randy came back, “but Mr. Franklin still lost his light.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” I muttered.
The next morning, Randy and I were helping Dad fix a sagging barn door when Mr. Franklin pulled up in his truck. I took a step backward, bumping Randy and spilling a sack of nails on the ground. Mr. Franklin leaned out his pickup and glared at us. “Well, they’ve done it again,” he said angrily.
Dad straightened up. “Who did what?” Dad asked.
Mr. Franklin stared at Randy and me. I gulped, wondering how he’d found out. “They broke my new light,” he growled. “It hasn’t been in a week, and they shot it out yesterday while I was away.”
“Who did it?” Dad asked.
I got ready to turn and run. I just knew Mr. Franklin was going to point a finger at Randy and me and yell, “They did!”
“Kids!” Mr. Franklin snorted. “Probably those kids on the motorcycles. They’re always racing through my yard and driving up into the hills. They leave gates open, tear things up, and scare my stock. Now they’ve gone and knocked my light out. If I ever get my hands on them … !”
“Those guys on the motorcycles sure saved us,” I muttered after Mr. Franklin had left and Dad had gone into the house to answer the phone. “And we didn’t even have to lie or anything,” I said, smiling, but still feeling dark and sick inside. I kept thinking of something Mom had told us once. She had said that you could tell a huge lie without saying anything, just by being quiet when you knew the truth.
“Why does Mr. Franklin have to be such a mean old guy?” I asked Dad when he came back.
Dad thought for a moment, then answered, “Oh, he’s not mean. Just lonely.”
“He sure seems mean to me,” Randy said, “always running around with that ugly frown.”
Dad scratched his head. “Sometimes Jed looks mean and angry with everyone because nobody ever seems very nice to him.”
After we had finished the door, Randy and I sat in the barn and talked.
“I wish we hadn’t done it,” Randy said.
I nodded. “We ought to pay him for the light.”
Randy gasped. “But then we’d have to tell him we broke it in the first place.”
“Well, maybe we could work for him. We wouldn’t tell him why, and that way we could pay for the light without his even knowing it.”
It was the best idea we had had. We hated to hoe corn, but we knew Mr. Franklin had a little patch that needed hoeing, so we headed for it. The sun was hot, bugs buzzed around our heads, sweat trickled down the sides of our faces, our backs ached, and I even wore a blister on my hand. But for the first time since Randy and I had broken the light, I felt good because we were making up for what we had broken.
“What are you kids doing?” a voice boomed out at us as we were finishing the last two rows.
We turned around, and there stood Mr. Franklin leaning against a fence post.
I gulped and licked my lips. “We’ve been hoeing your corn.”
“Why?”
“The corn needed hoeing,” Randy spoke up.
“We wanted to,” I added. “You don’t mind do you?”
“No, I don’t mind.” He almost smiled. “Mighty fine work.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a worn brown wallet. “I guess you boys could use a little spending money.”
“We didn’t do it for money,” I burst out.
Mr. Franklin looked at me, then at Randy, who was nodding in agreement.
“But I’d like to pay,” Mr. Franklin said, counting out some money. “I don’t remember any kids ever helping me before. Sometimes kids come over and shoot my lights and windows out, but this is the first time any showed up to help.” He held the money out. “I insist that you take it.”
We couldn’t make ourselves tell him about the light, so we took the money and headed for home, feeling worse than we’d felt before we hoed the corn.
“Why don’t we feel good, Russell?” Randy asked me. I thought you were supposed to feel good after you did something good. I just feel rotten.”
“I guess it’s because we did something good just to cover up something bad.”
For a long time we stayed in the barn, thinking. We both knew that there was only one thing we could do to make us feel better, but we were both scared to do it.
“I’m going back,” I finally announced.
“Going back!” Randy gasped.
“I’m giving the money back.”
“But what will you tell him?”
I took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll just tell him the truth. That’s what we should have done to start with.”
It was hard going back to Mr. Franklin’s place, one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life. I would rather have hoed a dozen fields of corn than explain what we had done to his light.
We found him by his old truck. The hood was up, and he was hunched over the engine, banging and tugging with a wrench. His hands were greasy, and his face was red.
As soon as he looked up and saw us, I pulled the money from my pocket and set it on the fender of the pickup. Then I stepped back and looked directly at him. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Randy was doing the same.
Mr. Franklin looked at the money. “What’s this for?” he demanded gruffly.
I swallowed hard and looked down at the ground. I watched a tiny ant tug and pull at a piece of straw that was ten times bigger than it was. “We didn’t hoe the corn for money,” I explained in a raspy whisper. “We did it to pay for your light.”
“My light?” He straightened up and wiped his hands of his pants.
My heart was hammering so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to burst. I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn’t have any breath to speak. I sucked in some air. “The kids on the motorcycles didn’t break your light,” I said. “We did.”
“But we didn’t mean to,” Randy got out. “We weren’t trying to be mean or anything. We were just trying to chase away that old magpie.”
“Did your dad make you come over here?” Mr. Franklin asked.
We shook our heads. “We’re sorry,” I mumbled. “That’s why we wanted to hoe your corn. To make things right.”
For a long time he just stared at us without saying anything. I could feel little drops of sweat trickle down my back. And a fat, pesky fly kept buzzing around my head, but I didn’t slap at it or anything.
Finally he spoke. “Thanks, boys.” He even sounded nice. “I appreciate what you’ve done. Telling me about the light is more important than hoeing my corn.” He actually smiled. “Everybody makes mistakes, but only those who are really grown-up take the blame for them and make up for them.”
When Randy and I finally left the Franklin place, that dark, ugly feeling inside us was gone. I knew that that night I wouldn’t have any trouble saying my prayers or going to sleep.

Have you ever thought what it would be like to spend Christmas in a country halfway around the world, among people with different religions and different customs than yours? That happened to me when I was eleven.
My father is a professor of Middle East history. He believes that it is important to understand the countries he teaches about and that the best way to learn about the people is to live there. For two years my parents, my two little sisters, and I lived and traveled in many countries of the Middle East.
Our hosts on this particular Christmas Eve were the Hassans in Egypt. Mohammed Hassan, a student of my father’s in the United States, had said: “When you go to Cairo, please visit my brother Ali and his family. It will make them very happy.”
We went from Lebanon, where Daddy was teaching, to spend our Christmas vacation in Egypt. When we arrived in Cairo Daddy telephoned Ali Hassan, who invited us to his home for dinner the next night—Christmas Eve. Mr. Hassan called for us in his car. He seemed pleased to meet friends of Mohammed. When we reached his home we were received with the familiar Arabic greeting, Ahalan-wasahalan (You are welcome here)!” He introduced his wife, their three little girls and baby boy, Mr. Hassan’s mother, who lived with them, and relatives who were visiting from Upper Egypt.
None of them spoke much English and we only knew a few words of Arabic, so I dreaded the long evening ahead of us. It was bad enough to be missing all the excitement of Christmas—gifts, parties, and the Christmas services—but having to spend Christmas Eve this way seemed like a nightmare. I wished we were back in our cold hotel room where we could celebrate by telling the Christmas story, hanging up our stockings, exchanging small gifts, and singing a few Christmas carols instead of sitting in uncomfortable silence for hours on end.
While we waited for dinner we sat in a circle in the living room, smiling and nodding at our hosts who smiled and nodded back. My father and Mr. Hassan and the relatives from Upper Egypt attempted to discuss Egyptian politics and history, but the conversation was stumbling and broken.
The rest of us just sat. Finally Mrs. Ali Hassan smiled at my mother and handed her the baby. My mother cuddled him and crooned to him and he gurgled back. Across the room I saw Mr. Hassan’s mother glance at them for a moment and then quickly look away. Most of the time she just stared shyly at the floor, almost as if she were afraid to look at us. Like many traditional Moslem women, she wore a black kerchief that covered her hair and part of her face. She seemed out of place in the modern apartment with its gilded furniture and television set.
At last dinner was served. We went into the dining room and there on the table was a huge turkey! I could hardly believe my eyes. Did the Hassans know that turkey was a Christmas tradition for many American families or was it just a coincidence? The table was loaded! There were meats, vegetables, rice and potato dishes, pickled lemons, a special green soup, and other foods. Mr. Hassan piled our plates with turkey, and the other dishes were passed around.
“Eat, please!” Mr. Hassan kept saying. “Do you not like our food?”
I ate until I was stuffed. I saw my mother and my sisters struggling to eat more than they wanted, to please the Hassans.
At last the dessert was brought in. There were sweet pastries and pudding and then fresh fruit that always comes at the end of a Middle Eastern meal. I took a tangerine and peeled it, and then I noticed that my seven-year-old sister Anne and my father seemed embarrassed. Try as they would, they could not cut or peel their fruit. Anne saw Mr. Hassan looking at her.
“You do not eat your fruit,” he said. “Do you not like it?”
“I can’t eat it,” Anne answered, grinning. “It’s not real fruit. It’s artificial.”
I looked around the table and realized that the Egyptian family had been waiting for this moment. Mr. Hassan’s mother started to laugh and then we all laughed. We laughed until we cried. When we moved back into the living room, we were all relaxed.
The rest of the evening passed quickly. Mom played singing games with the children until my sisters grew sleepy. Finally she signaled to Daddy that it was time to leave. As we started to say good-bye, Mr. Hassan said, “Please, wait a moment.”
Soon his mother appeared, carrying an ornate brass candlestick shaped like a cobra. She gave it to my mother and made a little speech that Mr. Hassan translated: “My mother wants you to have this candlestick. She says that now that she has met some Americans and knows that they are nice people, she will no longer weep for Mohammed.” Then Mr. Hassan explained that every day his mother cried for Mohammed because she didn’t know whether he was happy or if people in America were kind to him.
I saw tears in my mother’s eyes.
“Shukran, shukran (Thank-you, thank-you),” Mom said and hugged Mr. Hassan’s mother.
“Please tell your mother,” she said to Mr. Hassan, “that we will treasure this candlestick. It will remind us of your thoughtfulness and hospitality and help us remember that even without words people can communicate. Warmth and understanding and laughter can be shared by all people. We will never forget this Christmas Eve in Cairo that has been filled with the true spirit of Christmas.”
Then I realized that this was a joyful Christmas. Piles of presents and tinseled trees no longer seemed important.

Reading aloud. I read aloud to a dear friend who is 91 and lives in the cottage next door. As we read we would stop and discuss how teachings apply to our lives. I will always consider this one of the richest experiences of my life. Sometimes the Spirit was so intense I was brought to tears. I am thankful for a wise and inspired prophet, who extended this challenge. Sylvia Willis, Hampstead, North Carolina, USA

Those reactions justified my confidence in the scriptures. The returned missionary who had resented the assignment wrote, “I have rediscovered an exciting adventure. I have once again astonished myself with the wonder of learning and understanding the gospel as it has been presented to us by the prophets. The gospel has become even more relevant in these last few weeks than ever before. I understand more clearly that faith and the strength of one’s testimony are things that vary from day to day and must be kept current.”

The other students’ responses were equally enthusiastic. It was apparent that scripture study affected them just as it affected the ancient prophets. It vitalized their prayers, improved their sensitivity to spiritual things, increased their productivity, strengthened their self-mastery, and changed their attitude toward life.

One student spoke of a more sensitive conscience: “It seemed to have a residual effect on my conscience of not letting me rationalize so easily . … Especially since I had become engaged, I had noticed that I was trying to rationalize a few things, play it close to the line between black and white. I don’t say reading the scriptures was the only influence, but I am glad for their influence.”

Several students spoke of a new spirituality. A law student wrote: “One significant thing distinguishing the past year for me is the matter of scripture as a means of maintaining spiritual sensitivity. The results have been so undeniably stimulating to the spirit that I am now confident that daily scripture study shall be a life-long pursuit.”

A girl active in her sorority found that scripture reading helped her stay spiritual at school: “Well, I decided that if I promised to read the scriptures for thirty days, I would do it for thirty days—which wouldn’t do me too much good. So I promised to do it for the rest of my life. That was about six months ago. I’ve almost read the Book of Mormon three times since then and oh the difference! It has made possible the thing that I have always thought impossible, which is to be spiritual during the school year.”

Some students who had never enjoyed the scriptures discovered what a delight they could be. Wrote one girl, “I have tried to read the Book of Mormon many times, and each time felt that something was lacking. I had to force myself because I didn’t enjoy it and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. This year I’ve loved every minute of reading the scriptures. I now read the Book of Mormon every morning, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I thought it would be terribly hard to get in the habit of reading every morning, but it hasn’t been.”

Another wrote: “I am one who often used to ‘tune out’ when scriptures were read, not purposely, just automatically, and also one of those people who has never read the Book of Mormon. I started to read it two or three times but never got past 2 Nephi. … my whole attitude toward the scriptures and even the gospel itself has changed. Not that I didn’t feel a testimony before, but my testimony was built on faith and not scriptural knowledge. Now I feel that I have a much better understanding of the gospel and how it applies to me personally. Every time I read the scriptures at home or when we read them in class, I feel a closeness to God and Jesus Christ and more of a desire to do good. Even my prayers have changed, and I’ve only read through Enos.”

Students discovered that the scriptures brought them closer to God and made their whole lives happier. A boy living in the dorms wrote: “When I read scriptures out of the Book of Mormon, it seemed as though my whole day went more smoothly. I was happier with people. My life became cleaner. I would pray night and morning, which was hard to do before. I can control habits easier and ignore social pressures that are in the dorms. I really can’t explain the feelings I have, but all I know is that I feel closer to God.”

Many times the most beautiful examples of obedience and service are given by ordinary people who live close to us. Sister Ana Rita de Jesus, an elderly widow, lived in Anápolis, Brazil. She could not read or write. The missionaries would go to her home every week to read the scriptures to her. She was loving and kind. Every Sunday she would ask the missionaries to help her fill out a tithing slip. Sometimes her tithing and offerings were not more than a few cents, but she knew the law and wanted to obey it. After paying her tithing, she would walk into the room where the sacrament meeting was held in the rented house used as a chapel and would place a flower on the pulpit. In doing so, she served her brothers and sisters, bringing beauty to the place where we worshiped the Lord. That sister, in a very simple way, taught us obedience and service through her faith. She knew that obeying the commandments is the best preparation to serve. President Monson advised us in the last April general conference to “obey the commandments” and “serve with love” (“In Harm’s Way,” Ensign, May 1998, 47). Sister Ana Rita did so throughout her life.

Matthew Cowley was ordained an Apostle in 1945. As a young man he served a mission in New Zealand, and later he returned as mission president during World War II.
I had a little mother … in New Zealand. I knew her on my first mission when I was [young]. In those days she called me her son. When I went back to preside, she called me her father. …
Now, on one occasion I called in as I always did when I visited that vicinity to see this grand little woman, then in her 80s and blind. She did not live in an organized branch, had no contact with the priesthood except as the missionaries visited there. We had no missionaries in those days. They were away at war.
… She was out in her backyard by her little fire. I reached forth my hand to shake hands with her, and I was going to rub noses [in a Maori greeting] with her. And she said, “Do not shake hands with me, Father.”
I said, “Oh, that is clean dirt on your hands. I am willing to shake hands with you. I am glad to. I want to.”
She said, “Not yet.” Then she got on her hands and knees and crawled over to her little house. At the corner of the house there was a spade. She lifted up that spade and crawled off in another direction, measuring the distance as she went. She finally arrived at a spot and started digging down into the soil with that spade. It finally struck something hard. She took out the soil with her hands and lifted out a fruit jar. She opened that fruit jar and reached down in it, took something out, and handed it to me. And it turned out to be [a lot of] New Zealand money. …
She said, “There is my tithing. Now I can shake hands with the priesthood of God.”
I said, “You do not owe that much tithing.”
She said, “I know it. I do not owe it now, but I am paying some in advance, for I do not know when the priesthood of God will get around this way again.”
And then I leaned over and pressed my nose and forehead against hers, and the tears from my eyes ran down her cheeks.

A big forward with biceps the size of pot roasts skates over the blue line and fades away from us. Without slowing he lets rip a 20-foot wrist shot at the goal, or more precisely at Scott Tollestrup, the poor guy in net.
The puck meets Scott’s face mask with a slap, and he sits down hard on the ice, shaking his head.
“That happens when you play goal,” says Scott’s dad, Barry.
Scott takes a break from practice and skates over. He pushes up his helmet. Behind him the rink resounds with the heavy echo of voices. All around figures are moving, sticks and skates zigzagging on the ice. “You get hit; you shake it off,” Scott says, and grins.
His mother folds her arms and rolls her eyes. “People say hockey goalies have rocks in their heads,” she says. I like this family already. They are real people.
The fact that Scott, 14, would allow burly hockey players to fire 90-mile-an-hour pucks at him may be beyond comprehension for most of us. But to Scott, hockey is part of him. The shots he faces in a game are like the challenges of life. He realizes he can’t be perfect, get a handle on everything, but he’s getting better all the time.
Almost every boy in Canada has batted around a hockey puck at least once, and most have dreamed of playing professional hockey. Scott is no exception. Growing up in this hockey-crazed town of Lethbridge, Alberta, Scott longed to be the last defense on the ice, 15,000 fans watching as he shut out the Edmonton Oilers, taking MVP honors in the Stanley Cup finals.
Still, the odds are against him ever making it to the pros, so he’s enjoying the experiences along the way. He’s especially proud of representing Southern Alberta at a tournament in Vancouver last year. He played well enough to be selected a Canadian All-Star.
But being an all-star can go to your head. Every now and then Scott has to remind himself what’s really important.
“Once you put the hockey jacket on it’s instant popularity,” he says after practice. Scott’s with his older brother, Troy. They sit cross-legged in their basement, trading hockey cards and playing video hockey. “Some of the guys think they’re pretty hot. Once in a while I might join them and put somebody down—let it go to my head. When I put somebody down I always end up thinking about my brother, Troy.”
Troy, 17, has had a slight motor-skills problem and learning disorder since birth. It’s not serious enough to affect his life much, but it does make him a little different from the other kids. “When he was in elementary school he got picked on a lot,” adds Scott. “I think about that and stop. I try to get the others to stop, too.”
Not to be outdone, Troy starts talking about something he intends to do for Scott. He’s planning on a mission. One of the main reasons is to be an example to his younger brother.
“It’s very important I go on a mission,” says Troy. “Scott probably feels if I don’t go, he won’t have to.” I notice a sideways glance he gives his brother. It’s obvious they’ve had this conversation before.
“I see a mission,” Scott counters. “I hope to go. I want to keep the Holy Ghost with me and that’s a good way. If you’re fooling around with your friends you lose the Spirit, but if you pray and think about it hard, it’ll come back.”
Barry and Mary wander down to join their boys in the basement. Dad picks a black Pittsburgh Pirates cap off the floor.
“We have to pry this hat off Scott’s head,” Barry tells me. Scott grabs the hat and pulls it on. His blond hair disappears and his ears look bigger—I decide not to mention that. “He’s listed as 163 pounds on the team roster, but he’s really only 162. The hat.” Barry points to his head. Scott ignores him.
A son in the National Hockey League—that’s a dream a dad can get excited about. Barry goes to all of Scott’s practices, every game. He admits he had to control his enthusiasm.
“The first few years I pushed him,” Barry says, “but I’ve learned you can’t be too critical or push too hard.”
It took some time for Scott and his dad to find a good mix, but the relationship they have now seems to help them both. For Barry, the payoff is in the time with his son. While Scott, Troy, and their mom are very active in the Church, Barry is not. So he counts on the hockey tie to bring them close.
According to Mary, the boys’ mom, “When Scott’s in a game, he’ll look up into the stands at his dad. They have a silent message system. When Scott makes a good play he’ll look up and know his dad’s happy, and not too happy if he makes a mistake.”
And Dad has good things to say about Scott. He tells about the time Scott tried out for Bantam hockey. One of the other goalies was cut. “Some of the kids started giving him a hard time,” adds Barry. The coach was moments away from having a bad situation on his hands when Scott stood up for the goalie and got the players to settle down. “Scott knows what it’s like to be cut. But I think it’s more than that, something you can’t teach. He tries to care about other people’s feelings.”
Perhaps Scott has learned there is always somebody watching. On the rink it may be a scout or a future coach. In life it could be anybody.
“When Scott played on the Southern Alberta Select Team,” says Mary, “the coach told the team they needed to drink coffee to get going for the games. Scott and another LDS player wouldn’t.”
Scott smiles. “The funny thing was all the other kids ordered coffee, but they ordered caffeine free.”
Scott starts pulling out the odd collection of pads and equipment he needs for an afternoon game in Red Bluff. It’s a typical Saturday with typical commitments to hockey. But while the game does take up a good part of Scott’s life, he wants to be a balanced person.
He stops organizing his hockey gear to show me the saxophone and guitar he likes to play. He says he’d take me for a ride on his motorbike but it’s seized up. And he talks about seminary as if it’s the greatest invention since face masks for goalies. The gospel, he’s discovered, is important in being a well-rounded young man.
“Seminary has opened a lot of doors for me. There’s so much to know,” says Scott. “My seminary teacher is really good. With him it’s easy to understand the scriptures. The Millennium and the Second Coming are really interesting. Reading the scriptures is like reading a story—not a fairy tale, but about a different time. It could be a perfect movie, if you shorten it up a bit.”
But in trying for balance, Scott has discovered he needs to set priorities. A year or so ago, he was playing several sports, going to school and seminary, taking music lessons, spending time with friends. “I was thinking of quitting hockey,” he says. “I wasn’t happy, and it took up so much of my time. I realized if I wanted to play hockey I had to give up some of the other stuff.” He decided to put aside other sports and his guitar for a while. The NHL, the crowds, the excitement—it’s a hard dream to let die.
But other goals are approaching fast. A mission, marriage, and all the decisions in living the gospel are almost here. Just talking to Scott you get the feeling he’ll make the right choices when he needs to. You hope hockey will help him get where he wants to go, but that it will be a part and not the whole.
The last word on Scott is saved for his coach, Kirby Nishikawa. Something Kirby said at practice—something you may have already guessed about Scott. “He’s an all-around great guy to work with. He has a great work ethic and is a good example to the other players. What he does with his talent is all up to him.”
But before I can start wondering where they will put the statue of “Scott Tollestrup—The Perfect Young Man,” Coach Nishikawa sees our hero goofing off at the other end of the ice and bellows, “Tollestrup! Get over here!”
It’s a command that has echoed through this arena more than once, Scott’s mom admits.
Scott takes his place in goal. In front of him a line of players stands waiting to challenge. By now Scott knows he can’t be perfect or get a handle on everything. But remember, this is one goalie who is getting better all the time.

In the past eight months in the Philippines, I have heard many testimonies of the blessings of the gospel. Speaking at the dedication of his ward chapel, a Filipino bishop expressed his gratitude for the gospel message that came into his life about 10 years ago. He described how it rescued him from a life of selfishness, excess, and abusive practices and made him a good husband and father. He testified of the blessings that had come to him from paying his tithing.
Speaking at a leadership meeting, a counselor in a stake presidency who is a lawyer and community leader said: “I can declare to the whole world without mental reservation that the greatest thing that ever happened in my life is my becoming a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It … made a great difference in my life and that of my family, even if I feel there is more that I should learn and apply in my life. The Church is indeed a marvelous work and a wonder.”

Years ago, I worked as a senior managing partner at one of the world’s leading private equity firms when my wife and I were interviewed by a senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He called us to serve as mission leaders for the Church in Africa. We had many things going on in our life at that time. We were involved in some very challenging family dynamics. We were heavily engaged in large humanitarian efforts across the world while also managing a large and rapidly growing global investment business. As we sat there that day with this beloved Apostle and reflected on our personal situation, we both politely said that this was probably not the best time for us to serve a mission.

Without hesitation, this member of the Twelve turned to my wife and said, “Lynette, you are going to make a great missionary and companion to your husband.” He then turned to me and said, “You really don’t get it. The Lord is calling you to save your life. You are either going to live your life by covenant or convenience. There is never a convenient time to serve. This is a matter of faith. You either believe that the Lord will bless your life with the blessings you need, as you do His priorities, or you don’t.”

Those words changed my life. I left my company, went to Africa, and later found all that we had worried about was answered and resolved.

There were five of us on the trail crew that day. We were all new to the job, so when we gathered around to hear the assignment for the day, we were delighted to learn that we would start on a new trail—Clegg Canyon they called it.
“You mean Fly Canyon?” replied Verle, our fearless leader.
“Why Fly Canyon?” I asked.
With a sly smile, Verle looked down at me and said, “You’ll see.”
While we unloaded the Jeep, Verle filled us in on what work needed to be done. At last we were ready to start the trail. As we walked, Verle kept reminding us that this trail was considered one of the most miserable assignments because of the flies, but we couldn’t see any flies, so taking him seriously was a little hard. Verle had a way of pulling your leg at times, and I was usually a gullible victim. But today, he assured us, once the sun was out, the flies would be too.
As we hiked up farther into the canyon, we soon came to realize how right Verle was. At first the flies came in pairs, buzzing around my ears and making quick landings on my nose. Then they became bolder, so we were sure they had called out their battalions. I had considered myself a patient person until then. Every 30 minutes we had to stop and recoat ourselves with insect repellent. We especially had to drench our hair to keep the pests from getting entangled. When we began to realize that our efforts to avoid the flies were in vain, we began to lose our tempers.
It finally came to the point where we knew we were doomed. The newspaper headlines flashed through my mind, “Forest Service Employees Carried Away by Flies.” Something had to be done quickly. We tried to work faster, believing motion would shoo the flies away, but our sweat made a more delectable landing. As all good news travels fast, more flies came. In desperation we turned to our leader, who, surprisingly, was taking this all very coolly. He explained that we had to learn how to relax and laugh at annoying situations.
“What is so humorous about 50 million flies attacking us?” I asked.
“Look at it this way. They could carry us through the canyon and save us the trouble of hiking up the trail,” Verle replied.
While we sat eating our lunches (it was more like sharing them with the United Fly Nation), we began to relax and develop a humor of our own. At first the laughter was scarce, but one joke led to another, and we were soon lying back in laughter, oblivious to the millions of black specs around us.
That morning we had loaded the tools that were expected to be useful in completing our assignment. But as we headed down the trail that afternoon, we carried with us a new tool—humor.
On the way down to the Jeep, we were rewarded with a sudden cloudburst that finally rid us of our pests. Free at last, we skipped down the trail like children, grinning from ear to ear. We had survived! But, more important, we had laughed.

Christopher Vingoe of the Kings Lynn Ward, Norwich England Stake, overcame severe brain injuries in his childhood to achieve six grade A’s at A-level last year. That’s like doing well on the college entrance exams and placement tests in six different subjects. This incredible feat earned Christopher the Queen’s Gold Medal for Academic Achievement.
Queen Elizabeth II presented Christopher with the award. “She was lovely and very easy to chat to,” says Christopher, who is now serving a mission in Leeds, England. He even told her a little about missionary service for the Church.
When he was six, Christopher was hit by a car while crossing the street. He spent five days in a coma and had a blood clot on his brain. His recovery has amazed doctors. When Queen Elizabeth was told about Christopher’s accident and how he has recovered, she joked, “Perhaps it knocked some sense into him.”

I stood in line at a gas station. In front of me, a mother with two small children asked for $3 worth of gas and two vanilla ice cream cones.
At first glance I could see that they had very little. The children were barefoot and wearing tattered clothing.
I heard the woman place what seemed to be an infinite number of coins on the counter to pay her bill.
After paying for my gas, I walked out and glanced at the mother’s car. It was an older model that likely got very poor gas mileage.
I felt a twinge of sympathy for this mother of two, but I started my motorcycle and went on with my day.
Less than a minute into my ride on the highway, a voice came to me: “Go help her.” The prompting came twice.
I shook my head, thinking that she had probably already left. What would I say to her anyway?
The voice came clearly a third time: “Go help her!”
I turned back toward the service station, trying to figure out what I was going to say if she was still there.
Upon arriving, I saw that her car doors were open. She was in the driver’s seat, and her two small children were enjoying their ice cream in the backseat.
I offered a small prayer, asking Heavenly Father what I should say. The same voice said to me, “Introduce yourself and ask if she needs help.” I approached her car and introduced myself. I shared with her that I felt impressed to ask her if she needed help.
She began to cry and said, “I just finished praying to Jesus, asking Him to send someone to help me.”
Heavenly Father had answered her prayer. I paid to fill up her tank with gas and gave her the phone number of someone in our elders quorum who was hiring at the time. I do not know what happened with this young mother afterward, but I am grateful I followed the prompting to help her.

Spencer Goble didn’t know what he was getting into when he started his Eagle Scout project.

“I decided to get pictures of all the bishops my ward has ever had and then put their pictures in nice frames to be put in the meetinghouse. I didn’t know my ward dated back to the earliest Utah settlement.”

To complete his task, Spencer had to dig into Utah history and rely on help from people in his hometown of Bountiful, Utah. Help came from many willing sources in the form of books, pictures, and money.

The result of Spencer’s efforts is now on display in the church building of the Bountiful First Ward, where Spencer is a teacher. After 92 hours of hard work and more than a little stress, pictures of bishops dating back to 1849 are on display for everyone to enjoy.

“My testimony has really been strengthened through this project,” says Spencer. “I think about how hard it would have been to be a bishop in the ‘wilderness’ when the Church was only 19 years old. It took strong men. But bishops today have to be strong men too.”

Late in 1928 the family moved to Cardston, where Eldon again worked as school principal. To supplement their meager depression income, he sold insurance and custom-made suits, milked cows, raised chickens and a vegetable garden, and served on the town council. He also served in the Church as Scoutmaster, bishop’s counselor, and bishop of the Cardston First Ward.
While serving there as a second counselor he became a hero among the local youth with a piece of innovative leadership. It seems that few of the deacons were attending priesthood meeting. Concerned, Eldon went to each of them and found that they had only overalls to wear and were ashamed to come to meetings. He told them that if they would come to their priesthood meetings, he would attend in overalls too. They agreed, and deacons quorum attendance rose to almost 100 percent.

Family—what a sacred name for those we love the most. If someone asked you to name the greatest thing about your family, what would it be? I know that most families, including mine, are not perfect, but every day we are trying to be more kind and thoughtful to each other. This past month my father died. I learned many lessons from my dad. He had such great faith. He said, “Dying is just like walking into another room.” The day he died, I thought: My dad died today! This was his last day on earth! He has just walked into another room. It was such a sweet, sacred experience for my family and me.

I was blessed with a strong testimony of and love for the gospel at a young age, but I don’t recall one defining moment when I knew serving a mission was right. I just always knew I would go. I set a goal early to live in a way that would qualify me to serve a mission.
When I began preparing my mission application, I fasted, prayed, and attended the temple. As I worked with my bishop, I continued to feel the peace I had felt throughout my life about serving a mission.
The process was difficult at times: life seemed to suddenly get more expensive, and school and work became more demanding. I was at college away from my family, and it seemed as though all my friends were getting married. It was scary to realize the people I cared about were going to continue changing while I was gone.
Because I didn’t have any singular spiritual event that confirmed my decision to serve, it was easy to doubt when things got hard. But the Lord blessed me after I received my call to the Chile Santiago East Mission to develop a love for the people in my mission, even before I left. I now have a lifetime of experiences that have borne testimony that a mission was a good choice for me.
Madeleine Bailey

Eighteen months after the surgery, my husband and I were invited to speak at a religious conference. The topic? “What accessing the grace of Jesus Christ daily looks like.” As we prepared, we immersed ourselves in studying Christ’s grace and how it operates in our lives. Grace, as defined in the Bible Dictionary, is “divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ.”
One week before the conference, I went on a bike ride with a friend. I rode my recumbent trike, which gives me the freedom to move, while she pedaled beside me on her bicycle. We talked as we rode, and as usual I cried. Sadness had become my constant companion, something the medical world might label as situational depression. I opened up to my friend about how lost I felt, about the overwhelming sadness that shadowed my days.
She asked me a question that has stayed with me ever since: “Stacy, what exactly are you sad about? What do you feel like you’ve lost?” I didn’t have an answer. I knew I was sad about my loss of movement, fearful that I would never regain my strength or the ability to do the things I once could. But the source of my sadness remained elusive.
A few days before the conference, the answer I had been searching for came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I woke up in the middle of the night, a time when my anxious thoughts usually kept me company. But that night, a phrase echoed in my mind: “Graceful—full of grace.” As I drifted back to sleep, I thought to myself, “Yes, that’s a good point. Being graceful means being full of His grace. I’ll include that in my presentation.”
When I woke again in the morning, the same phrase was there, clear and insistent: “Graceful—full of grace.” I realized then that this message wasn’t just for the people at the conference—it was for me. That was the source of my sadness. That was what I had lost: my physical gracefulness.
As a young girl, I had been a ballerina, dancing through much of my adolescence and into college. I had never thought of myself as graceful, but years of training had ingrained in me a certain physical poise—a way of standing, moving, and balancing. Even after I stopped dancing, that grace remained. And now, in the quiet of those early morning hours, the Lord was redefining the word for me. I no longer needed the physical grace I once had. I had His grace to lean on in my moments of weakness. His grace was sufficient to help me smile, to shift my focus from my limitations to His strength.
Heaven’s message to me was clear: “You no longer need to rely on the physical grace you’ve learned. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”
Graceful.
It’s a word I now carry with me, not as a reminder of what I’ve lost but of what I’ve gained. It’s not about my grace anymore—it’s about Christ’s grace, filling my heart and mind.
Graceful. It’s a word I now carry with me, not as a reminder of what I’ve lost but of what I’ve gained.
At the conference, I found myself in a room packed with people, needing to cross to the other side. There was no clear aisle, no easy path to navigate. As I stood up, I whispered to myself, “Graceful.” His grace, not mine. That simple word gave me the courage to move, to weave through the crowd without fear.
The more I let go of my old grace and embraced His, the easier life became. I found the strength to do what I could never do alone. His grace allowed me to see myself as a beloved daughter of God, to give my all, knowing He would fill in the gaps where I couldn’t. His grace brought gratitude even for my weaknesses.
I still wrestle with frustration and fear every day. My “thorn” hasn’t been removed. But now when those dark thoughts creep in, I have a powerful tool: the Savior’s grace. I repeat the word graceful to myself and move forward with Him. I don’t know when or how physical healing will come, but I trust that He knows, and that’s enough.
Like Paul, I am grateful for my infirmity because it has opened my eyes to see Him more clearly in my life. I place my trust in Him, and in return He gives me peace and joy and the assurance that He will deliver me.

As a young missionary serving in the Chile Concepción Mission, Sean Douglas began his service in the rural backcountry. His “wonderful first Chilean companion and trainer spoke Spanish at lighting speed.” After three months in the South American country, Elder Douglas still struggled with Spanish.
Discouragement and homesickness plunged him into doubt and drove him to his knees. “I am not doing any good,” he prayed. “I do not seem to be impacting anyone.”
His heart filled with a burning question from above: “Are you here for Me, or are you here for you?”
At this moment he resolved with God to forget himself and keep trying. “That very night I dreamt in Spanish,” he said.
The following day everything was easier. “I could speak a little better. I could understand a little more,” he said. “The mission catalyzed my testimony of the power of prayer and that when you go and do what the Lord commands, He always provides a way for you.”
That philosophy has guided the rest of his life.

CeLisa Wathen of the Virginia Branch, Minnesota Minneapolis Mission, was selected as SnoWeek Princess at her junior high school. This was special to CeLisa since she was nominated just two weeks after moving to Minnesota from American Fork, Utah.

For CeLisa it was interesting to move from a school that had predominately LDS students to one where she is one of two members of the Church in the student body. But after her selection as princess, most of the school knew of her beliefs.