“Mikey and Miles,” Friend, Apr. 2011, 4–5
Mikey & Miles
Love and help each other, be honest, kind, and true (Children’s Songbook, 59).
Hi, I’m Mikey. I’m six years old, and I have a dog named Truffles. Miles had a dog too, but his dog died.
Miles is angry with me. Dad and Mom say that maybe it’s because Miles’s dog died and I still have one, and maybe that doesn’t seem fair to him. I try to be friendly to Miles, but he calls me names and makes faces at me. Once he even threw a rock at me when I took Truffles for a walk.
A few weeks ago, Truffles had two puppies. My parents said we could keep one of the puppies, but they didn’t know what to do with the other one. They asked me to think about it.
I thought a lot about it. I even prayed about it. And then I started thinking about Miles. I knew that Heavenly Father knows all about Miles and the hard time he’s going through. I thought maybe I could do something to help.
I told Dad and Mom that I wanted to give the other puppy to Miles. They smiled, and Dad asked me why I wanted to be so kind to someone who treated me badly.
“You and Mom tell me that we should love everybody, not just people who are nice to us,” I said. “I want to do what Jesus would do.”
When I took the puppy over to Miles, his parents said he could keep it. Miles looked very surprised and happy, so that made me happy too.
Miles doesn’t call me names anymore. Now he just calls me Mikey. All of my friends call me Mikey, and Miles is one of my friends.
Illustrations by Matt Smith