Waiting to be fired upon, they saw a Morse code message flashing at them instead, signaling out Merry Christmas. "As the reality of what had just transpired and the words 'Merry Christmas' took hold in their minds and their hearts, they unitedly sent up a cheer" of relief, joy and true celebration.

"The spirit of love had prevailed — the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of Christ."

President Monson asked the audience to let Christmas be a time for lifting others from loneliness, for praying for peace, for forgetting self and finding time for others, for discarding the meaningless and stressing true values. "Let it be a time of peace because we have found peace in his teachings."

President James E. Faust, second counselor in the First Presidency, told of a young Canadian man who sent every cent of his paycheck home to his parents during the Great Depression. On Christmas morning, the young man gave his father "the greatest Christmas gift he had ever received."

Opening the gift, he found it was his son's Boy Scout journal, which had the letters "GT" printed on each page in the corner. The letters on each day were crossed out, and the journal recorded happenings during the year.

After tears filled his eyes, the father announced to his large family that their brother, Brigham, had given the journal to him, with a note that read, "Dear Father, I had no money to buy gifts this year. This is all I have to give you. Each crossed-out GT is a record of a good turn which I have done for someone each day of the year."

Brigham Card is now 90 years old and loaned President Faust the diary he had given his father in 1933. "It still records the crossed-out GT for each day of the year, showing he did a good deed for someone else each day.

"We are each the agents of our Father in Heaven to do Christ-like deeds for all his Father's children," President Faust said, "even as he offered to do in the grand premortal council when he said, 'Here am I, send me.' "

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