Lost and Found

A member of our stake presidency related the following:

A newly called Relief Society President was adamant about visiting every inactive sister in the ward. She and her counselors were able to carry out this resolve except in the case of one particular sister. The president knew this sister’s name but had no address or phone number. She made the sister’s name a subject of daily prayer and put her name in at the Temple. This went on for several weeks.

One day the president came home from running errands and found a dog wandering about her house as if it were lost. The dog would not go away so she put the dog into her garage and called animal control to pick up the dog and find the owner. Animal control asked her to see if the dog had a collar with an identifying number so that they could identify the owner more easily.

She went back out to the garage, found the collar, not only with a number, but with the owner’s name and telephone number. It was the very number and name she had been searching for. What are the chances that this was a coincidence? God watches over us, especially if we are sincere with our prayers.

How many were in the family of Jesus?
Mark 6:3 says:

3. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.

BYU Education Week Instructor, Dr. David Ridges, author of the N.T. Made Easier, page 167, has said: “(The citizens of Nazareth could not accept that Jesus was anything but a common man). Verse three, above, gives us information about the size of Joseph and Mary’s own family, which they had after Jesus was born.

They had four sons, whose names are mentioned in this verse and at least three daughters. The Greek plural form for the word ‘sisters’ in verse three means three or more.

It is also interesting to note that it is generally believed that James, one of Christ’s half-brothers mentioned in this verse, (the writer of James 1:5, ‘if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God,’ that led Joseph Smith to pray), was the writer of the book of James in the New Testament. (See Bible Dictionary under ‘James, Epistle of.’)