Description

No Story

Some years ago, on a Sunday morning, Debie was driving to the airport for a business trip. The radio was playing, and a story came on. She was caught by the story and listened intently, but just then, she arrived at the airport and couldn’t listen to the climax of the story. She did not catch who or what the story fully involved. 

Well, she couldn’t get it out of her mind. It became a quest to hear the rest of the story. For the next five years, she asked everyone she knew who was strong in the Gospel about that story. No one knew it. No one could tell her. 

 Then, one day, she had a guest over for dinner and in the course of conversation, she told him what she knew of the story, and immediately, he looked at her and said, “I know that story and I know where you can find it. I have the book and it’s on page 16.”

Finally, after five years of inexplicably seeking the rest of the story, she now had it. It was a miracle. She found a copy of the long-out-of-print book online and ordered it. Sure enough, there on page 16 was the long-sought story. 

Perhaps the greater question is why had that story meant so much to her—enough to doggedly seek it for five years? Debie knew some of Church History, but little of her family’s role in it. In generations past, members of her family had left the Church and taken their posterity with them. She knew virtually nothing about them. 

When she read the end of the story, she read a telling quotation from Father John Young. Intrigued, she read more and dug deeper. What she discovered changed her life. John Young, the father of Brigham and Lorenzo Dow Young, was her fourth great grandfather. That story led her to that book and that book showed her the critical role of her family in the Restoration of the Gospel. 

Previous to this miracle, Debie would sit through Pioneer Day narrations and feel empty. She had no part in the story, but with that story and that book, suddenly she was filled. She now had a story—a heritage. 

“It filled my life with a sense of coming from a great family,” she said, “and that I had things that I should live up to because I had a family that was special.”

History is just meaningless recitations until we are invested. What a pity to let the rising generation rise clueless as to who they really are. 

Source: Debie Wangsgard. October 2025 Danube River Cruise.