Mirthright

One week the choir director decided to take the choir upstairs to the chapel to practice for a few minutes before sacrament meeting began. After climbing the stairs from the basement, we found the chapel doors locked. We tromped back downstairs only to hear that the bishop was on the way with the key, so we climbed the steps again. But when we asked the bishop to unlock the door, he replied, “I can’t. I don’t have the key.” As we once again made our way down the stairs, one choir member remarked, “This is what they call opening exercises.”

Monte D. Thompson
Salt Lake City, Utah

When our little girl was learning to dress herself she came to me one morning very proud that she had put on underwear, socks, and shoes, all without help. When she handed me her dress I asked her why she hadn’t put that on herself. Very matter-of-factly she replied, “Because the buttons are in the back, and I’m in the front.”

Diane Philp
Glendale, Arizona

At a conference, our regional representative related as an illustration how his father, his son, his grandson, and he had once gone up together in a hot air balloon. His point was topped, however, by our stake president who straight-facedly commented, “That’s certainly a new way to get your four-generation program off the ground.”

Paul N. Johnson
Mountain View, California

While we were driving to my mother’s home, my four-year-old daughter, Jennifer, exclaimed, “Mommy, I wish my last name was Ology. Then my name would be Jenny Ology and that’s one of grandma’s favorite words!”

Connie Hall
Salt Lake City, Utah

Recently our home was destroyed by fire—we lost nearly everything we had. We hardly believed it when we found one book that had escaped completely unharmed, The Refiner’s Fire by Elder Alvin R. Dyer.

That irony helped. Another light touch was the look on our insurance agent’s face when he saw the list of items destroyed from the bedroom: one roller blind, one chest of drawers, 700 pounds of wheat.

Sidsel and Espen Amundsen
Oslo, Norway

In a Junior Sunday School discussion on the priesthood the teacher asked her students what they had to hold before they could baptize.

My granddaughter, Janice, remembering the baptisms of her older brothers and sister, tentatively responded, “Well, you have to hold your nose.”

Mrs. Lenard Shumway
Thermopolis, Wyoming

Soon after I arrived as a nonmember in Salt Lake City, I was visited by the missionaries. During the visit they showed me a picture of Joseph Fielding Smith, who was then President of the Church. Now I had heard of Joseph Smith, and I asked the missionaries, “You mean he’s still alive!”

“Yes,” they replied. “He’s old, but he’s still alive!”

Debra G. Compton
Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota

When my husband was called to a new bishopric, I tried to explain to our three-year-old son, Christopher, why his daddy wouldn’t be able to sit with us any more in sacrament meeting. “You know, Chris,” I ventured, “we’re going to have a new bishop.”

He nodded, and with wide-eyed sadness, replied, “Yes. The old bishop got ruined, so we had to get a new one!”

Ann L. Hall
Malta, Idaho

Illustrated by Michael O. Rogan