Hannah, an outreaching and devotional believer, is the cause for everything that takes place in the story and she is the story itself. Although she is an adolescent, she is not the kind of person you would suspect her to be given what her age implies. She invites her three friends on a week long retreat that she arranged with her church, so they can look for and pan for gold and other earthly valuables with her to earn a sum of money that will go directly toward her church's Mission Boards. Throughout the duration of the story's plot, Hannah helps to cause dynamic change in each of her friends by witnessing to them and even speaking to them and large crowds of people in parables; as well as help them to realize that there is a treasure in heaven that's greater than gold.