Story

When Joseph Fielding Smith was eight years old, his father gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and asked him to read it. "I received this Nephite record with thanksgiving," he later recalled, "and applied myself to the task which had been assigned to me." His love for the book motivated him to get his chores done quickly and sometimes even leave baseball games early so he could find quiet places to read. In less than two years after receiving the gift from his father, he read the book twice. Of that early study, he later said, "There are certain passages that have been stamped upon my mind and I have never forgotten them." (See Joseph Fielding Smith Jr. and John J. Stewart, The Life of Joseph Fielding Smith (1972), 57.)