Pleased to open the gift and admiring the devotion of parents who sacrificed much during the Depression to grant his wish, he prepared to go with his mother to the home of a neighbor boy who also wished for a train, which his mother had purchased. When he found that boy's less-expensive train had an oil tanker car that his did not, he pleaded with her to keep it, knowing the other boy wouldn't miss it. She reluctantly agreed but wasn't happy about it.

When they delivered the train, he watched the boy laugh with delight. "I began to realize just how selfish I had been. Asking my mother to wait for me, I ran home and picked up the oil tanker car, plus an additional car from my more expensive train set. When I returned to the boy's home, I handed him the two cars.

"The feelings I experienced as I watched his added joy are difficult to describe yet absolutely impossible to forget. I had learned that true happiness comes only by making others happy."

Christmas is a time for "lifting the lives of those who live in loneliness. ... Let it be a time of prayers for peace and for the protection of those who are far from us. Let it be a time for re-examining ourselves and for dedicating our lives to the values that endure."

President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency, recalled hearing descriptions of the Savior as a boy when in the Salt Lake Tabernacle balcony listening to the music of George Frederick Handel.

"I can remember feeling something in my heart. I was young then. I am older now and I know what that feeling was. It was the Holy ghost, whose companionship I had been offered when I was eight years of age. The spirit confirmed to my heart that the words I heard sung that night, and other words we will hear sung tonight, are true."

Christ was sent to Earth as the babe of Bethlehem prophesied in scripture, "the Lamb of God, sent to break the bands of death. He came with the power to bear our sorrows and our grief that he might know how to succor us. And he was born to atone for all of our sins as only he could."

The feeling he had in the Tabernacle that night was faith and hope, he said, "hope that because of him I could follow and serve him and so be born to a newness of spiritual life. Because of the gift of his birth, my heart could be changed to become again like that of a little child, pure and clean."

Though there is darkness and cruelty in the world, "yet there is the light and the love which the Savior has brought and is bringing into millions of heart. We can choose on this Christmas and all the days which will follow to feel that light and love."

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com