From the Relief Society Magazine, 1934 –

Anne Brent, Helpmate

By Elsie Chamberlain Carroll

Part 1

Anne opened her eyes in the darkness and lay listening. Yes, it was one of the twins crying. Jan’s tooth must be aching again. She slipped from the bed, carefully not to waken Peter, and hurried up stairs to find the little fellow sitting up in bed holding a swollen cheek. She brought the hot-water bottle and cotton and oil of cloves from the bathroom as she chided herself for neglecting to make an appointment with the dentist when the child had complained several days ago.

Before she had Jan quieted, Jean was awake and she had to tell them the story of the little prince and the big white elephant before they were willing for her to turn off the light and go back to bed.

(more…)

(See here for background)

From 1959 –

(more…)

“What Shall I Do?”: Paid Employment for Mormon Girls, 1927

Agnes Lovendahl Stewart

The introduction to this series is posted here.

VII. The Stenographer

Keys!

Keys to the Door of Opportunity!

Typewriter keys!

Yes, really, that is what they are. You can get almost anywhere by the route of stenography – that is, anywhere in the field of business. All of which mixes our metaphors considerably, but still sticks to the truth; for the value of making funny scrawls on paper which nobody else can read, and pecking away at a little machine, lies not in being a stenographer, but in making stenography a stepping-stone to something greater.

(more…)

The current manual discusses the Parable of the Sower as representative of all of Christ’s parables, and uses it “to help class members develop ‘ears to hear’ so they can understand how Jesus’ parables apply to them.” Two chapters from Obert C. Tanner’s 1935 seminary text, The New Testament Speaks, are presented below. The first covers the same ground as the current manual and discusses two closely related parables(the Parable of the Tares, and the Parable of the Seed Growing of Itself). The second chapter discusses why Jesus taught in parables and explores four additional parables having to do with the Kingdom of God in the last days.

Jesus Describes the Kingdom of God

An old definition of a parable defines it as “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” The word “parable” is now understood to mean a short story taken from the common things of native and human life. It presents to the individual in a most graphic and animated way, some important thought or teaching which is suited to man’s higher spiritual life. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus gives his own clear explanation. We cite the verse of his interpretation with the story of the parable, and offer some additional thoughts.

(more…)

For background, see here
previous episode
next episode

.
(more…)

Vai Sikahema of the Deseret News has written a two-part series (part one, part two) about the contributions of Tongan culture to the Church, and of the Church to Tongan culture. Part two includes the story of his grandparents, Sione and Salote Wolfgramm and their three young children, who in 1947 embarked on a 150-mile sea voyage with a group of Latter-day Saints to attend a district conference. (In contrast to some of today’s Latter-day Saints who resist any emphasis on historical events to which they have no direct ancestral connection, these Tongan Saints made this significant effort to gather with other Saints observing the centennial of the early Saints’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley.)

A terrible storm arose, drenching, chilling, and tossing the exposed Saints for three days. The Wolfgramms’ nine-month-old son Vili Manulea caught pneumonia from his exposure and died soon after the small boat finally reached land. To add to their grief, circumstances forced the Wolfgramms to continue on to the conference with the other Saints without the comfort that the traditional 10-day Tongan mourning customs might have given them. They buried their baby son, then immediately left the grave to go on.

(more…)

Another dose of humor from the Church magazines of 1934 —

Experience

Junior: “Oh, boy! A letter from home.”

Senior: “Let’s go out and spend it!”

Now, Sadie!

He: “I like a girl who can take a joke.”

She: “Then you stand a good chance of being accepted.”

(more…)

From the Children’s Friend, May 1945 –

Danger on the Hill Road

By Marie Larsen

Linda frowned upon the rain beating heavily against the farmhouse window. “I knew it!” she muttered. “I just knew something like this would happen! On the only day I could go to town, I have to miss another Junior First Aid class. I’ll never be a nurse!” The disappointment caused a lump to swell in Linda’s throat.

It was terrible living out in the country where nearly every rain caused a minor landslide somewhere along the road to town. Never would Uncle Trevis allow anyone to travel the Hill road during a storm. there was danger of falling rocks, or of slipping off the steep grade, besides landslides. And today it had to rain!

Linda turned away form the window with a sigh. Did Florence Nightingale ever have troubles such as she was having? She took up the little first aid manual she had intended to take to the meeting. It wasn’t nice, having to study another chapter alone. She’d had to do it so much lately, too. And she didn’t think she could correctly apply any of the things she’d learned by herself.

(more…)

Soon after Tuesday’s earthquake in New Zealand, the Christchurch Stake set up a Facebook page to inform Latter-day Saints in New Zealand of member needs, opportunities for service, contact information, and encouragement. This is how we do disasters now.

For readers who don’t use Facebook, and because it might be interesting to look back months or years from now for an example of social media at work in the Church, I’ve cut and pasted some (not all) of the first three days’ representative status updates, and transcribed the video statements. There is a sense of immediacy in these brief statements that will disappear from accounts written after the emergency has been dealt with.

Mormon history in the making:

(more…)

This newspaper and magazine advertisement dates to 1923 –

(more…)

Our guest poster blogs as Middle-Aged Mormon Man – he says we may call him “MMM” for short – with a cheeky blog about his life and interests as a, well, as a middle-aged Mormon man with eclectic interests. I’ve never seen a blog quite like it – it’s sorta like a Mormon mommy blog except, you know, written by a man, one who’s been around the block a few more times than most Mormon mommy bloggers, and so, well, I guess it’s really not like a Mormon mommy blog at all. Check it out – it’s a surprise all around.

MMM doesn’t refer to Sister MMM as his DW, but as his EC (Eternal Companion); his four children are not DD and DS, but FOML (Fruit of My Loins). He enjoys his anonymity – “Have you stopped to think that I could be your Home Teacher, or your kid’s seminary teacher, or the crazy conspiracy theorist that won’t shut up in Elder’s Quorum? I’m not – but I could be.” Not so well hidden in all the impudence are his feelings about sacred things, which you can read on his profile page.

Note: The following post may not be safe for work – you won’t be sorry you read and listened to it, but you may want to be cautious about where you are. — AEP

(more…)

From the Relief Society Magazine, May 1927 –

“Mothers Always Is”

by Mrs. Bessie Alston

Martha Harmon had merely come to the door to shake her dust cloth, but the balmy air that caressed her hot cheeks lured her on to the porch. There she lingered, absorbing through every sense the joyous signs of spring that proclaimed themselves on every hand.

A few early insects drifted lazily along in the warm air. A flicker drummed madly at the sheet iron extension on Martha’s chimney, stopping every few minutes to call his sharp “wick-a-wick-a-wick,” in evident protest that this promising location would not yield to his attempts at home building. The crocuses were just throwing out faint purple and yellow hints of future glory. Slender spears of green marked the spot where golden daffodils would shortly stand.

(more…)

The Time was occupied this morning by the returned Salmon River Missionaries who all felt first rate. – Minutes of North Cottonwood Ward, 18 April 1858

Presidents Young and Smith occupied the time in the afternoon. – Deseret News, 24 March 1870

Attended the Ward meeting at 2 P.M. where we had a very enjoyable time. Bros Myres, Crosby, Steele & J.W. White occupied the time. – Volney King diary, 7 September 1879

At two o’clock attended the Tabernacle services, and was asked by Uncle Angus to occupy the time. – Abraham H. Cannon diary, 7 August 1892

(more…)

These questions were asked of the Sunday School General Board in 1955:

Q. What recommendation does the General Board make for Junior Sunday School children during Fast Meeting?

A. The planning and conducting of all ward meetings is under direction of the bishop. The Junior Sunday School Committee of the General Board advises that children attend all sacrament meetings with their parents and learn to worship through actual participation.

The following quotation from the Presiding Bishopric’s Page of the Deseret News, January 22, 1955, gives counsel on this issue:

“It is reported that some wards are providing story-telling for children under eight years old during the speaking part of the sacrament meeting program. These children are excused from the meeting after the passing of the sacrament, to go to a classroom where someone, by appointment, tells them stories.

(more…)

“This consolidation is a positive move …”

Okay.

Effective July 1 of this year, the French-speaking regions of Europe (France, Corsica, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland and Belgium) will be reorganized into two missions, with headquarters in Paris and Lyon.  I’ve lost track of the number of missions that have opened, divided, consolidated, dissolved, reconstituted, reorganized, realigned, and otherwise adjusted in every other kind of  administrative move in the generation since I was a French-speaking missionary. Here is the latest development, with map.

Farewell, Chambésy. Hello (again), Lyon.

(more…)

From the Relief Society Magazine, July 1960 –

No Comments, Please

by Dorothy Clapp Robinson

Sandra Baker hummed merrily in time to the whir of her sewing machine. Sandra loved sewing. She loved this soft rose corduroy. When made into rompers for baby Cindy, it would make an angel of her for sure. She even loved this sunny – what was it called? – bay window. No matter what service it had given in the past, right now it kept this creepy second-floor apartment from being the worst. Oh, it really was a beautiful morning.

The window recess was large enough for a small table. Sandra could use it for her typewriter, or, as now, for a work table for her sewing. Without moving, she could look up and see, not too far away, the roofs of the university buildings where Van at this moment was struggling with law books. And, though she could not see it, the building where Van worked after school was closer still.

(more…)

How accurate is your mental image of our grandmothers’ Relief Society? Do you imagine them gathered around quilting frames? embroidering pillowcases for the bazaar? performing as Singing Mothers? holding a sisters-only testimony meeting? delivering boxes of groceries to a needy family? They did all that, and lots more like it.

But can you imagine them listening intently to, earnestly discussing, a lesson like the one below? While you might find the actual scientific content dated, read this with the idea of its opening a new window into the lives of our grandmothers and their willingness to tackle even the most uncomfortable subjects. Then tell us if you’ve learned anything new about your sisters of an earlier generation.

Social Service

(Fourth Week in April [1927])

EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS OF CHILDHOOD – JANE AND HENRIETTA

Serious and difficult emotional problems are presented by the two adolescent girls, Jane and Henrietta. Both were the victims of unintelligent parents. The basis of these problems is not uncommon in adolescent development because of lack of understanding by their parents; one girl was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and the other was contemplating suicide. Both suffered these serious emotional upsets because of the lack of sex education and guidance.

(more…)

Lesson 10: “Take My Yoke upon You, and Learn of Me”

Because this lesson from our current manual is a hodge-podge of not obviously related ideas (the stated lesson purpose, “to help class members understand that as we take the Savior’s yoke upon us and do his will, we will find the peace and joy that he has promised,” is an overly general statement that does not even address two of the incidents which make up the lesson), it has been impossible to find a single lesson from the past that covers the same material. Instead, I have identified lessons from Obert C. Tanner’s seminary text, The New Testament Speaks, Salt Lake City: Church Department of Education, 1935, which, although they do not appear in the 1935 text consecutively and do not draw connections among the various incidents, at least address the same stories covered in our current manual.

(more…)

For background, see here
previous episode
next episode

.
(more…)

Her Father in Trouble

When Grover Cleveland’s little girl was quite young her father once telephoned to the White House from Chicago and asked Mrs. Cleveland to bring the child to the ‘phone. Lifting the little one up to the instrument, Mrs. Cleveland watched her expression change from bewilderment to wonder and then to fear. it was surely her father’s voice – yet she looked at the telephone incredulously. After examining the tiny opening in the receiver the little girl burst into tears. “Oh, Mamma!” she sobbed. “How can we ever get Papa out of that little hole?”

(more…)

Dennis and the Mormon Battalion

By Mabel Harmer

Previous Chapter

Chapter 12 – Homeward Bound

Marshall and Captain Sutter made every effort to keep their discovery a secret, but Sam Brannan managed to get hold of the news and made a special trip to San Francisco to spread it about. Almost at once the gold-seekers started to pour over the land. They came from Monterey and other towns to the south and from the hills of San Francisco.

At first it was only a trickle of prospectors that went past the walls of the fort. Before many weeks, a steady stream not only went past but overran all of New Helvetia, camping anywhere and everywhere and trampling down the orchards and fields as if they were so much stubble.

To Sutter’s dismay the helpers on his estate caught the fever also and dropped their work to rush off and try to pan fortunes on the American river and nearby streams. he watched helplessly as the men in the tannery left the vats filled with half finished leather, the blacksmiths left their shops and the field hands deserted the wheat fields. The Indians and a few Mormons were all who stayed to take care of the vast domain. Everyone else was off to dig and wash gold.

(more…)

This item is posted not because it is in any way significant, but precisely because it is so completely insignificant. This renewal notice, printed on thin, cheap pink paper — paper so acidic that it has burned a deep stain into the pages between which it has lain for the past 75 years — was tucked into hundreds, maybe thousands of copies of the Improvement Era in 1935. Tens of thousands of similar notices must have accompanied issues in other years. It would have been a common, familiar piece of litter in the lives of our grandparents.

But for all the thousands of such renewal notices that were printed, how many exist today? Does the survival of this copy add anything to our knowledge of or feel for life in the Mormon past? If all copies had utterly vanished, would history be any the poorer? I think so, although I can’t exactly say why. I only know that in common with all people, we Mormons tend to save the things we know are valuable — the leather Bibles, the silver Sacrament services, the paintings, the carved furniture — while letting vanish many of the small details that make up our world.

We can’t save everything, and probably shouldn’t even try to do so. But when something survives against the odds, somehow the picture of our past comes into sharper focus, if only infinitesimally so.

(more…)

We know from a 1928 history that the Salt Lake Missionary Home opened in 1925 with a one-week training schedule for outgoing missionaries, which was expanded in 1926 to two weeks. A printed schedule from 1946 outlines a ten-day training schedule.

I’ve located a printed schedule from September 1936 which details a new 17-day schedule (noting that immediately prior to that time a ten-day schedule was in effect). Here’s what outgoing missionaries could expect in that time:

PROGRAM, FIRST WEEK

Monday

Note – All missionaries must arrive at the Home before 10 o’clock a.m., and register between 9:00 and 11:00 o’clock a.m.

(more…)

Dennis and the Mormon Battalion

By Mabel Harmer

Previous Chapter

Chapter 11 – Gold

In the course of the next few months the Battalion moved on to the Pueblo Los Angeles, a rowdy, struggling village overrun with Indians, Mexicans and dogs. They built a fort on a hill overlooking the town and, although the Mexicans planned to take it, the most remained in the hands of the Americans until the day came when they were to be mustered out.

All morning there was an air of excitement and anticipation throughout the camp. At noon when the companies were called to order, each man knew that it was for the last time. it was with something of an anti-0climax that they heard Lt. Smith pass through the lines and say in a low voice, “You are discharged!”

“And that is that,” said Neil, as they broke ranks and he came over to where Dennis was watching the proceedings. “What are you folks going to do now?”

(more…)

“What Shall I Do?”: Paid Employment for Mormon Girls, 1927

Agnes Lovendahl Stewart

The introduction to this series is posted here.

VI. The Beauty Operator

How fashions change! A few centuries back a lady wasn’t considered beautiful unless she could balance on her head a wire basket that would hold a bushel of apples. Only she wore it upside down, and covered it with white hair in which roses were entwined. Dressing the lady’s coiffure must have been a good day’s work! One would almost require a stepladder, too, for the operation.

Once the women wore their hair in fish nets. In the day of the Gibson girl they puffed it way out over their foreheads like a big French loaf, and they wore a coy curl around the neck. Inside of the puff was the mess of undesirability called a “rat.” This species of animal continued for several years, merely shifting its habitat from one part of the head to another.

(more…)

“Welcome to the Hui-Tau,” the annual conference of the New Zealand mission.

Missionaries began work among Europeans in New Zealand in 1870, with very modest success. In 1881, they established contacts with the native peoples – the Maori – who responded very favorably to the gospel as taught by the elders. It didn’t take long before the mission conference familiar in other parts of the world took on a unique Maori flavor in the New Zealand Mission. The conference – the hui tau – quickly became a multi-day cultural affair, usually scheduled to coincide with Salt Lake’s April conference, with religious instruction and rejoicing, communal feasts, and traditional cultural displays. Members planned their year around the hui tau, and the hui tau was planned around the year by whatever community was honored to host the next event. Two members of the Council of the Twelve – David O. McKay and Matthew Cowley – attended hui tau during their mission travels. The great hui tau celebrations lasted into the 1950s.

(more…)

.

.

.

– from the Relief Society Magazine,
May 1934

.

My mother went away on February 15, 2000.

I think that no matter how old we are, no matter how long it has been since we depended on our mothers for support and advice, or how long they have been ill or feeble or old, probably even if yours was a difficult relationship, having our mothers go away changes us. In my case, I wasn’t even aware that I had thought of her as a shield between me and the Void Out There, but once she went away, I felt — still feel — exposed and vulnerable; to what, I don’t know, but she had stood between me and It.

Sympathy to all of you whose mothers have gone away. May we have more of faith and less of fear, and be all that they wished for us.

Dennis and the Mormon Battalion

By Mabel Harmer

Previous Chapter

Chapter 10 – California

Dennis had thrown away the last shreds of his shoes on the banks of the Colorado. Since that time he had suffered severely as they traveled through the thorny thickets that covered the way so completely that, in some places, the brush had to be burned away before the wagons could get through. Sometimes he stepped on hot coals and that was even worse than the thorns.

As he came limping into camp one evening he was met by Nancy, who said, “Come on over to our camp. Ma has something for you.”

It seemed to him as if it took the animals an uncommonly long time to get enough to drink from the tiny steam by which they were camped. When finally he dragged himself over to the Abbott camp he thought he couldn’t have been more tired and hungry if he had walked a hundred miles that day instead of fifteen.

(more…)

.

.

.

.

.

From the Children’s Friend,
February 1929

This letter was forwarded to Northwestern States Mission President John G. Allred in 1926:

Dear sir and brother: –

You will no doubt be very much surprised to receive this letter from an entire stranger, but I am hungry to hear from an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and would walk as far as I could to hear one preach the Gospel. I was baptized into the Church twenty-two years ago in the state of Wisconsin, by Elder James Shawcroft from La Jara, Colorado, but have not seen or heard an elder or a member of the Church for over seventeen years.

Couldn’t we have an elder out here? I know he would be received right. The people round about are anxious to hear the Gospel; they know little about religion. Once in a great while a minister comes down in this part and preaches a sermon, but they don’t seem to make much impression.

(more…)

As with most lessons in the current manual, Lesson 9’s purpose statement – “To encourage class members to become more dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ” – is a generic one that could apply equally to all lessons in the manual. Scripture verses for discussion all come from Matthew 6 and 7 and emphasize doing over merely hearing or knowing. This doing aspect is explored in several lessons from the 1947 Gospel Messages course, drawing on some of the same verses as our current manual, expanding the discussion in ways that may help today’s teachers ask more engaging questions than the “And so what does this mean?” litany of the manual.

These lessons come from Carl F. Eyring, Good Tidings to All People. Salt Lake City: Deseret Sunday School Union board, 1946. They do not appear sequentially in that manual but are clustered here to more nearly duplicate the coverage of this year’s manual.

(more…)