Previous installment

During the week I became very ill with malaria. We had been spending a day with some friends, about three miles from the church. We started walking to the church for evening services. I became so sick that I could go no farther. I excused myself and staggered off the road some distance, where I knelt down. After explaining to the Lord in a few words why I was there, and my desires to continue my work, the sickness which had afflicted me passed away instantly. I arose, caught up with the company, and arrived at the meeting well and on time. That evening I spoke for one hour and a quarter on the “Divine Mission of Joseph Smith,” and the Church which he was instrumental in giving to the world.

After finishing that interesting week’s services, we returned to our tracting and visiting duties. We went our way to some friends, where we had previously stopped.

(more…)

The first of several short stories about Janet and her little brother Stevie, orphans who are looking for a secure place in this world.

From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1941 –

You Know How Boys Are

By Olive W. Burt

Part 1

The beautifully dressed, kind-looking visitor paused for a moment beside Stevie’s desk, and tenderness flooded her face in answer to the pleading in the little boy’s eyes. The visitor turned to Teacher and spoke softly.

Janet’s heart stood still, absolutely still, for a moment. Then, as Janet had known she would, the visitor looked across the room at the little girl, said something more to Teacher, and walked slowly to the door. As she opened it, she looked back at Stevie’s bright head and pleading eyes.

(more…)

When War Shall Cease

God haste the day,
Each one should pray
Throughout earth’s vast domain,
When war shall cease,
And naught but peace
Among mankind shall reign;
When cannon’s roar
Is heard no more
On land or on the main.

God haste the day
When all can say,
No more do men oppress –
That they are free
From tyranny,
And joys of life possess.
Then shall abound
The world around
A reign of righteousness.

– Juvenile Instructor, 15 August 1898

Lesson 19: “Thy Faith Hath Saved Thee”

[Luke 18:1-8, 35-43
Luke 19:1-10]
John 11

Purpose: To help class members develop greater faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Note: This lesson plan, which draws on the raising of Lazarus to the exclusion of the other suggested scripture stories, seeks to “develop greater faith” in two distinct ways: faith that the Lord will keep his promises even when blessings are delayed, and faith that Jesus is the Christ who laid down his life voluntarily and took it up again.

(more…)

This lesson in our current manual discusses three parables that appear in Matthew 25, from the Sermon on the Mount of Olives. There is no attempt to link the parables in any way – they are presented as three distinct stories, and might as well have been the basis for three separate lessons. The 1935 lesson presented here, from Obert C. Tanner’s The New Testament Speaks. Salt Lake City: Church Department of Education, 1935, attempts to relate the parables to each other, and suggests some questions that may help today’s teacher do better than the “reading comprehension” questions that dominate the current manual.

Parables Given in the Discourse on the Mount of Olives

The Story:

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:

(more…)

Lesson 21: “What Is the Sign of Thy Coming?”

For a faith that believes so strongly in the Second Coming and has built quite a theology around the Millennium, the people who will be living then, and the kind of work that will be done, it was surprisingly difficult to find a former lesson focusing on the signs of the Second Coming (they must be there. I just couldn’t find much in New Testament-focused manuals; perhaps a search of Doctrine and Covenants manuals would have been more fruitful). This one comes from “The Master’s Church,” the Gospel Doctrine course of study for 1969-70.

That lesson is followed by a lesson from the 1978-79 Gospel Doctrine manual concerning the Second Coming as presented in Doctrine and Covenants 43-45, an “additional teaching idea” included in this year’s lesson.

Despite the laughter, even ridicule, of much of the popular reaction to one man’s widely publicized claim that this past May 21 would be the date of the so-called Rapture, to be followed in a few months by the end of the world, this lesson might be a timely one to discuss what is known through authentic prophecy and scripture about the Second Coming, and our anticipations for that day.

(more…)

For background, see here
previous episode
next episode (to be added when posted)

.
(more…)

A minor announcement in light of all the good stuff that is coming from the St. George MHA meeting this weekend: Beginning next Saturday (June 4, 2011), the Church History Library will be open to patrons from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (an hour later at each end than has been the case to date). That fact is on the library’s website, but it’s worth pointing out for those who are accustomed to the old hours and wouldn’t necessarily know to check the website.

Joys of Motoring

Amiable Victim (bowled over by automobile): “I’m perfectly all right. Thank you. I’m not a bit hurt.”

Motorist: “I say, you’re behaving jolly well about it. It is a real pleasure to knock down a thorough sportsman like you.”

He Proved It

Sally: “Napoleon must have been quite a boy in his day.”

Hopemore: “Mebbe so, but he’s a bust now.”
(more…)

Mrs. Benson — she of the pearl-handled revolver who took the crooked salesman hostage — returns in another story to meddle charmingly in the affairs of cousins.

From the Relief Society Magazine, August 1936 –

Mrs. Benson Takes a Hand

In Which Pastry Wins Over “Pothooks”

By Ivy W. Stone

Mr. Benson, affectionately known to his many friends as “the Judge” was still exploring the wilds of the Salmon River. As the children laughingly remarked he was enjoying a “wifeless honeymoon,” riding over rapids in a rubber boat, hunting beavers and bears with movie camera, and generally roughing it in the wild region. But though it left Mrs. Benson alone at nights, she vehemently rejected the suggestions of the children that she board around with them until their father’s return.

“Stuff and nonsense!” she cried indignantly. “Why should I be afraid to stay alone? Only guilty folks are afraid, and I have no troubled conscience. I shall enjoy the peace and quiet. Besides, I would have to come traipsing back to feed the canary, and water the plants and cover the chrysanthemums, and just what would poor old blind Samson do without me?” This last statement was a true climax to her argument; for the six Benson children, in spite of marriage and responsibility, loved “Old Samson” indulgently.

(more…)

Here’s another taste of esoterica being explored in this week’s MHA meeting in St. George: You’ve heard of the Adamic language; you’ve know about the Masons — what in the world could possibly connect them? — AEP

Throughout his life Joseph Smith was fascinated by the prospect of restoring the Adamic language. When Joseph Smith and other church members spoke in tongues, Joseph Smith would often tell them they were speaking in the pure language of Adam. In 1832 Joseph Smith took the first step in formalizing the Adamic tongue when he received a revelation revealing several words in the Adamic tongue. Joseph Smith revisited this Adamic revelation in the Spring of 1835 during the preparation of the Doctrine and Covenants; and added two new Adamic words; and he revealed six written characters associated with these words.

(more…)

Due to internet connection problems, I have been unable to post these MHA teasers as expected in advance of the MHA annual meeting which gets into full swing today in St. George, Utah. This morning, enjoy a glimpse of one of the unusual topics that helps to explain why Mormon historians need a venue like MHA in which to present their interests. — AEP

On April 5th, 1829 Oliver Cowdery met Joseph Smith, and began recording dictations on April 7th as Joseph Smith translated the gold plates through his seerstone. Oliver had a rod in his possession through which he had been receiving revelations [D&C 8:6,12] and later that month, Joseph Smith received revelations through his seerstone related to Cowdery’s rod and his desire to become a translator.

Oliver’s “gift” is given several titles through the different versions of D&C 8: “the sprout” / “the rod” / “thing of nature” / “rod of Nature” / “the gift of Aaron.” A look at other uses of these titles from the 18th and early 19th centuries suggests these terms are related to divining rods.

(more…)

Discussion 4 – Courtesy in Church

For Tuesday, January 9, 1962

Objective: To emphasize that we honor our Father in heaven when we practice and encourage respect for others in Church and for the edifices themselves.

Because of the constant and varied needs which our Church edifices serve, they receive hard wear under normal circumstances. Only when every member considerately co-operates to protect these buildings can their sacred influence be fully enjoyed. This respect for churches and people is a visible component of reverence.

Children, as well as people of all ages, are welcomed to our Church services. Nearly every ward can point with pride to large families who attend meetings together and whose deportment reflects understanding of the purpose of the service by being reverent and courteous; however, there is evidence that many are yet in the learning process of acquiring these attributes.

(more…)

Father takes over the family’s grocery purchases — does Father really know best?

From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1952 –

Father Was a Good Provider

By Inez Bagnell

I knew the groceries had arrived because the delivery truck backed out of the driveway just as Mom and I came hurrying up the walk. Mom was limping a little as those comfortable shoes Father had bought her had been pinching her feet all afternoon while we shopped.

“I’ll get these shoes off, and we’ll hurry dinner, Elizabeth,” said Mom. With one shoe in her hand, she stopped at the kitchen door.

Father was already home from his law office and was acting queer. He was holding a bottle of large ripe olives up in front of him and it looked like those olives were on trial for their lives.

(more…)

A little nearer to our own time than most in this series, these photos show us a recognizably modern Church — the Primary is standing before the television cameras, the Baby Boom and America’s post-war prosperity are both well under way, and we could have had an entire post with nothing but pictures of the Primary Children’s Hospital under construction in 1950. But we’re still the same people we always were: see the Primaries and Sunday Schools and choruses and ward gatherings, and Latter-day Saints in a Europe beginning to recover from World War II.

Gallup, New Mexico
Southwest Indian Mission Primary

(more…)

(See here for background)

From 1956 –

(more…)

AND FOR ETERNITY

Olive Woolley Burt

Previous Episode

Chapter 10

The spring days floated by as lightly as almond blossoms, each one filled with the perfume of growing things and the sweetness of spring breezes – but each one bringing closer the day when Alec’s and Jim’s leave would end.

Now Alec begrudged the hours that Delsa spent with Jeff Holden’s children.

(more…)

Previous installment

I suffered constant persecution from friends and relatives from the time it became known that I was investigating the gospel. I was called a “sinner,” and no treatment was too severe. I will mention an instance.

There was a large revival camp meeting held in the neighborhood and people were getting religion. I did not attend, but was busy at home with my daily duties. Later I missed some of my stock, and conducted an extensive search for them, but was unsuccessful in finding them. Finally, some time later a neighbor asked me if I was still looking for them, I said “Yes.” He said, “If you will look behind a certain blacksmith shop you will find what is left of them.” I looked and found the hides where they had been hidden, when they had been killed to supply meat for the barbecue, to feed the people who came to the Revival meeting. I told him that I would much rather have found the animals. He laughed at me and said, “They needed the meat, and you are a sinner anyway.”

(more…)

On May 26, the first day of the Mormon History Association conference to be held in St. George, Utah, I will give a paper on George Armstrong Hicks and his experiences in the Cotton Mission in the early 1860s. Hicks was the author of a folk song still sung today titled “Once I Lived in Cottonwood,” which tells of the extreme hardships of the mission, but couched in comedy and even ridicule. The church leaders could not have been pleased, but it was only by laughing at their situation that the missionaries could bear their difficulties. Of accounts written by 19th century Mormons, Hicks’s autobiography rates high for its details, candidness, humor, and pathos.

George Armstrong Hicks, born in Ontario, Canada, in 1835, was three when his parents converted. His early life was that of a classic Mormon pioneer: The family moved to Nauvoo in 1839 and left again in 1846 with the main body of the faithful after the murder of Joseph Smith. For the next six years, the family lived in Iowa, working to save enough to travel to Utah. Finally in 1852, they set out. Soon after arriving in Utah, they moved to Palmyra in Utah County. Here George, not quite eighteen, met sixteen-year-old “Betsy” Jolley, and in 1853 they were married. Three years later they moved the short distance to Spanish Fork. George was ordained an Elder and, in 1857, a Seventy.

(more…)

This is the week MHA members look forward to all year long! The annual meeting will be held later this week in Saint George, Utah. Members will hear speeches on Mormon historical topics from some of the best historians – both LDS and guest scholars – and will listen to papers on cutting edge Mormon history topics. There will be pre- and post-conference tours, meetings held over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and plenty of time for private conversations and networking.

A number of Bloggernacle regulars will be delivering papers. The preliminary conference program (the only version online, alas) can be viewed here (pdf). This is the year that Bill MacKinnon, one of Keepa’s friends, has served as MHA President – he has overseen arrangements for the conference and is scheduled to deliver his Presidential Address (in which, I have reason to know, he will announce two significant discoveries in Utah War research).

(more…)

For background, see here
previous episode
next episode (to be added when posted)

.
(more…)

Back Again

“What is your brother in college?”

“A halfback.”

“I mean in studies.”

“Oh, in studies he’s away back.”

(more…)

AND FOR ETERNITY

Olive Woolley Burt

Previous Episode

Chapter 9

SYNOPSIS: Delsa Marriott, who has been jilted by Hugh Temple, has been trying to find a way to hide the truth from her friends. At first she showed an interest in Jeff Holden, widower principal of the school, but the people of the town condemned her for being unfaithful to Hugh. Then she tried to fall in love with Alec Windsor, a visiting marine, but when Alec wants to marry her, Delsa is afraid because Alec thinks of marriage as a temporal contract, while to her it is binding for time and for eternity. Appalled at her failure, she decides to tell her friends the truth and resign herself to the thought of a loveless life.

During the days that followed, Delsa constantly gave thanks for her job – for the children grown restless under the spring sunshine and demanding all her energy during the school hours; for the morning and afternoon chores at Jeff’s house; for the spring tasks that absorbed her mother and her Aunt Martha and the neighbors.

(more…)

Like most Mormons, I have owned several sets of printed scriptures and have dutifully marked them up with red and blue – and sometimes a rainbow of other colors – pencils. Somehow, while I have difficulty writing in other books, it has seemed obligatory to scribble all over the pages of holy texts. I’ve never found a satisfactory way of marking them, though.

It’s fine to color a few verses, or put a border around them, when you’re scripture-chasing in seminary or when you’re a missionary handing your Bible to an investigator and asking her to read a selected verse – but when you try to move beyond mere proof-texting that method loses its effectiveness. And I’ve never, ever been so enamored of proof-texting that I was willing to follow any of those commercial systems for marking a defined list of scriptures about “faith” with blue, and a list of those about “repentance” with red, and a list of those about “sacrifice” with green. Ugh!

(more…)

I sometimes joke – or maybe it isn’t a joke – that if any of my friends ever find me lying in the street, freshly hit by a truck, they should rescue my computer and only then call 911. First things first, you know. This little laptop is stuffed with so many good things, documents and images and data that could never be reconstructed, so much good stuff that even with a fairly good indexing system I can’t keep track of what’s on it.

Just over a year ago, a Keepa post, Oh, WHOSE Mother?, discussed this poem and its authorship:

O My Mother, thou that dwellest,
In thy mansions up on high,
Oft I think that I remember
How you bade your child goodbye.
How you pressed me to your bosom,
Bade me a true son to be,
Ere I left my home eternal,
To accept mortality.

(more…)

AND FOR ETERNITY

Olive Woolley Burt

Previous Episode

Chapter 8

SYNOPSIS: Della Marriott, trying to find a way to make her friends think that she is the one who has broken her engagement to Hugh Temple, who has asked to be released so that he can marry an Australian girl, shows an interest in Alec Windsor, a marine on furlough in the town. But when Alec asks Delsa to marry him, she remembers that he thinks of marriage as for time only, while to her it means a contract for time and for eternity. Jeff Holden, the father of two children, has told Delsa he loves her, but she thinks he is merely lonely for his dead wife.

When Delsa awoke the next morning, her purpose had crystallized. Without knowing just how she had arrived at her decision, she nevertheless was absolutely sure of what she had to do.

(more…)

(See here for background)

From 1959 –

(more…)

Discussion 3 – Being a Good Neighbor

For Tuesday, December 12, 1961

Objective: To show that we serve our Father in Heaven better and are happier, if we obey the commandment “… whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them …” (Mt. 7:12).

As we move beyond the home circle, close associates are our neighbors. The value of politeness to them cannot be overestimated, for this is the pattern for peace.

Can we expect world peace when we cannot maintain it in our own small world? As a strong body of spiritual women, we Relief Society sisters should live peaceably with those around us. We should be exemplary in all of our dealings with our neighbors for the sake of our own happiness, their enjoyment of associating with us, and for missionary possibilities. We will then be attempting to obey the great commandment of loving our neighbors as ourselves. We should strive for thoughtful treatment of others, teamed with self-discipline, rather than keeping the rules for rules’ sake.

(more…)

David O. McKay in Australia, 1955 –

(more…)

Howard R. Driggs (1873-1963) was a Utah boy, a graduate of Brigham Young University who taught English and teacher training at the University of Utah for some 16 years before he joined the English faculty of New York University. He spent the rest of his long career in New York. He was deeply interested in western history, participating in several western and trails history organizations, and helping to gather and preserve tales of the Old West. He wrote or edited dozens of books during his long professional career.

A 1910 biography of Driggs, published in the Juvenile Instructor, almost exclusively concerns his Sunday School positions to that date:

(more…)

AND FOR ETERNITY

Olive Woolley Burt

Previous Episode

Chapter 7

SYNOPSIS: Delsa Marriott, trying to find a way to lessen the stigma when her friends will learn that she has been jilted by Hugh Temple, finds that Alec Windsor, a marine on furlough in the town, is attracted to her. She believes that she can make the people in the town think that she has been the one to break off her engagement with Hugh if she pretends to be in love with Alec. Jeff Holden, father of two motherless children, tells Delsa that he loves her, but Delsa thinks that Jeff is merely lonely for his dead wife.

On Saturday morning Delsa rose early to help her mother do the weekly wash. Sometimes, as this morning, she wished she could lie in bed, warm and safe and far from all the troubles and duties of the world about her. But the wash must be done, and her mother, strong and well as she was, could not be expected to do it alone while Delsa loafed in bed. At least, Delsa couldn’t expect her mother to work while she rested, so she tossed off the covers, dressed quickly in a faded blue gingham, and went downstairs.

(more…)