Mirthright

On the way home from Sunday School our four-year-old Jodie asked, “Did you hear me be quiet in church today?”

Roger Cheney
Gooding, Idaho

When our son Brad was about twelve or thirteen, he delivered papers on a route that included several widows. One lady asked him to cut her lawn for her, then tried to pay him for his work. Impressed by his Scoutmaster or our discussions about serving without expecting pay for everything, he refused the dollar she handed him. She insisted on paying him. “Okay,” he said, “how about a nickel?” They finally compromised at thirty-five cents.

When I heard what he had done, I congratulated him and told him I was very proud of him. Looking up at me, he asked, grinning, “Dad, are you proud enough to give me three dollars for the amusement park tomorrow?”

Evan C. Nielsen
Provo, Utah

One Sunday as we were going home from our church meetings, I asked our nine-year-old son, Ken, if he had been good for his Primary teacher. He replied, “Well, I don’t know how good I was for her, but she was sure good for me!”

Rinda Christensen
Cedar City, Utah

Our four-year-old daughter and I were looking through a store catalog one day when I told her that we needed to buy her a new sweatshirt to play in. She was excited, but a little concerned. “But Mom,” she said, “what will you do with my old sweatshirt?”

I told her I didn’t know; it was pretty ragged. But then her eyes brightened with the solution: “Why not give it to Resurrected Industries? They can fix it up for some other little girl.”

Ann Tyler
Idaho Falls, Idaho

In our Relief Society class, we were discussing the role of a wife and mother in supporting her husband in his priesthood callings. The teacher commented that the mother is the heart of the home. A sister in the back piped up, “If mother is the heart of the home, I need a pacemaker!”

Stephanie Bird
West Valley City, Utah

One day as our Sunday School teacher and his son were working in their garden, the boy asked, “If Jesus loved us, why did he make rocks?” His father tried the best he could to explain; among other reasons, he pointed out that mankind could learn the value of work by dealing with the rocks. “Well, then,” the four-year-old asked, “why did he put them all in our garden?”

Janice Aubrey
Salt Lake City, Utah

One Sunday evening our teenage daughter was singing with our ward’s choral group at a stake Mutual fireside. When a friend of hers called on the telephone, our five-year-old informed the caller that her sister was at a “choir-side.”

Gail S. Call
Saratoga, California

Six-year-old David asked to sit in my lap and have me rock him as he had seen me rock his two younger sisters earlier that evening. As I held out my arms and lifted him onto my lap, his older sister Chris told him he was too big to be rocked. David turned indignantly and replied, “You don’t outgrow your mom till you’re seven, Chris!”

Dianne Lesue
Boulder City, Nevada

Our elders quorum president, a farmer, received from one of his suppliers a ballpoint pen with a small plastic corn cob on the end. His wife, fearful that the children would pull off the cob, would not let their preschoolers play with the pen. One day, cleaning in another room, she overheard their son say, “Julie, you can’t play with that. That’s Daddy’s special elders corn pen!”

Leslie Fry
Marsing, Idaho

Our three-year-old daughter was playing hospital. When an emergency patient arrived, she called for assistance over the intercom: “Calling Dr. Bob, calling Dr. Kevin, calling Doctor n’ Covenants.”

Patricia Wilcox
Sidney, Nebraska

A Primary child, singing “I’ll be a Sunbeam for him” as the chorister led “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” in Primary, was heard to comment later, “I don’t want to be a sunbeam. I want to be a bus driver!”

Regina LaMar
Poulsbo, Washington