Mosiah 18

If you'll remember, there was a young priest among the priests of King Noah who believed Abinidi and started writing down what he was saying, which didn't go over super well with the priests of the king, so Alma had to go into hiding and started teaching the people the things that Abinadi said, about getting to live after we die, and redemption and the Atonement. His faith was so strong, he talked about these things like they had already happened; time was collapsed for him. 

He taught everyone who would listen to him, but secretly, because this is the kind of thing that would really make the king mad. He taught with power, and lots of people believed him, and they all went down to a place called Mormon, where Alma had been hiding from Noah.

After a few days, there were a lot of people hiding in this thicket listening to Alma talk. And he said, "Look, there's some water right there—if you are ready to carry your brothers and sisters who can't carry themselves and to be carried in your turn, to feel with each other, to laugh and to cry and suffer and rejoice with each other, to testify of God and stand as his witness, even when that's terribly uncomfortable and inconvenient, even when that means that they'll burn you like they burned Abinidai, if you want to do these things so that you can be God's people and children, so that you can be part of his work and become like him—if this is what you want, then in the name of God let's go be baptized. Let's witness to him that we're willing to make him promises and try really hard to keep them, even when we know and he knows that we can't really do that well right now, so that he can send his spirit to us to make us better than we are."

And the people clapped and cheered (a little dangerous, given their circumstances, but they were enthused), saying, "This is what we want!"

So Alma grabbed Helam and they went and stood in the water together, perhaps a little awkwardly, because neither of them had done this before. Alma said, "Father, cover me in your spirit, so that I can do this work the way you need me to."

And when he said this, the Spirit came down like the wind, like rain, like a natural and undeniable force and covered him, and he said, "Helam, I baptize you with God's authority. And this baptism is a sign to God and to you that you've promised to serve until you die and in return, you get the Spirit, which will lead you towards God and the Atonement and Christ, which was always the plan and always the answer." After Alma said this, he and Helam both went under the water, and they came out new and filled with the spirit. And Alma kept baptizing just like this, he baptized everyone there. About two hundred and four people were filled with the grace of God that day.

They called themselves the Church of Christ after that, and Alma started organizing, ordaining and teaching the priests to teach repentance and faith and redemption and just those things. And he told the church that they'd made covenants to be good to each other and work together towards the kingdom of God, so they better figure out how to love each other and be united. And he told them to preach and testify to each other, and through their covenants and the ways they taught each other and treated each other they became the children of God. 

One day Alma said, "Look friends, this thing where some of you are poor and some of you aren't—that really doesn't work for God. So from now on, if you've got a lot you give a lot, and if you don't have very much, you give less--but no matter how much you have, you give. Unless you have nothing, and then you are given to, at least for a while. But I'm not going to make you do this, because when you do things because someone made you, that doesn't do anything good with God, so you're going to have to figure out not just how to do this, but how to do this because you chose it and you want to do it, because you see the needs of your brothers and sisters."

And somehow, those people, they did figure out how to give to see each others' needs and to give to each other according to those needs, temporally and spiritually. 

So it was all going really well, except then the king heard about them and said that Alma was the worst and he was raising a rebellion, so this whole people, about four hundred and fifty people, just got up together one day and walked into the wilderness together and never looked back, and we don't talk about that in Sunday school.