Our current lesson has as its purpose statement: “To help class members live in holiness and be a chosen generation” and teaches principles of living in faith, enduring trials, and recognizing our divine nature. The lessons below from the 1928 New Testament Sunday School manual use different language and a different approach to teach a similar lesson, that man has a divine origin and a divine destiny, and that our conduct in this life aids or retards our developing that nature.

(The first lessons contains an unfortunate mischaracterization of the claims of natural science – science does not regard “any belief that cannot be verified by the methods of natural science” as false, only unproven or unverifiable. It’s easy to understand how the anti-intellectual and anti-science strain developed within the Church with such misunderstandings or misstatements slipping into the curriculum as often as they did.)

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For background, see here
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A Straight Tip

Johnnie (to new visitor) – “So you are my grandma, are you?”

Grandmother – “Yes, Johnnie! I’m your grandma on your father’s side.”

Johnnie – “Well, you’re on the wrong side, you’ll find that out!”

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Orchids in the Snow

By Rosa Lee Lloyd

Previous chapter

Chapter 6

Synopsis: Sharon and Sam Wynter, newlyweds, on their way to Fairbanks, Alaska, from Utah, make many friends, including Angus McFarland, a widower, his daughter Marie, and Susan Elge from Bristol Bay, who has brought her husband Herman to Anchorage for an operation. Arriving in Fairbanks, Sharon meets Sister Jensen, president of the Branch Relief Society, who rents her a log cabin. Sister Jensen also takes Sharon to visit Mary Billings who is blind. Marie McFarland visits Sharon in Fairbanks, and when Sharon becomes ill and finds that she is expecting a child, she sends to Utah for her Aunt Jewel, a nurse. McFarland brings Jewel in his plane from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

Three weeks later Sharry was feeling so much better she was up and dressed most of the time. Sam was expected home from his trip into the icy Northland.

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Questions answered by George Q. Cannon as editor of the Juvenile Instructor –

Questions are asked concerning the administering of the sacrament in the Sunday Schools, as to when those who bless the bread and those who distribute it to the people should partake of it – whether before serving anyone else or after they have served all.

There is no general rule concerning the manner in which these brethren shall partake of the bread and the contents of the cup. We should avoid being technical and stiff on these points. Those who bless and those who administer can partake at any time while the ordinance is being administered; though we understand that a rule has been established in at least one of the Stakes, to the effect that none of those who bless and administer the sacrament shall partake of it until after it has been passed around the congregation, and then one of their number shall serve it to them. The important thing, however, is that when they do partake of it, whether first or last, they shall partake of it in the spirit which the Lord quires.

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The Temple Site

By John A. Lant

A thousand hills o’er Eden’s garden roll,
The Blue flows to Missouri’s golden goal.
No torrent speeds from limpid source,
No rocks retard its dimpled course.
Wooded crest and vale we scan
Awaiting spur from hand of man.
Roadways thread the land about,
Startling steam blast heard throughout.
Electric cars in transit glide
Rounding curve ’long steep hillside.
Surpassing days when saints steadfast,
Gleaned gospel light such things would come to pass.
Here and there a stately homestead reared,
Villas fair dot sites on spaces cleared,
Cottages there on shapely mound,
Garden spots in plenty here abound,
Portending comfort, peace on earth,
May here, anew, have wondrous birth.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Temple site lies mute beneath the sky;
A rising plane, long waiting, wonders why?
The neighboring kine seek pasture and repose,
Why not of such a valued spot dispose?
Wait! – on Independence hillside, grand,
Zion’s Temple of the world will stand!

—

On visiting the spot, Nov. 24, 1905.

(1905)

I love reading accounts of the Mormon emigrant experience, whether crossing the ocean, riding the trains, or traveling by wagon or handcart. Most of our stories come from the early years of that travel: Everybody seemed to recognize the significance of pioneering; fewer people recorded the experience of traveling when emigration had become “routine.” But it was never routine for the people involved – even when the months of sail travel had shrunk to a week aboard a steamer, and when months of Plains walking had collapsed to a week on the rails, “coming to Zion” was a pivotal moment in an emigrant’s life, probably the greatest adventure of his life.

On Saturday, May 21, 1887 – long after such travel had become “routine” – a company of Latter-day Saint emigrants bound for Utah sailed from Liverpool aboard the S.S. Nevada, a steamer of the Guion line, the steamship company favored by the Church. The company consisted of 130 British Saints; 34 from the Swiss and German Mission; 10 from Holland; 6 from Iceland; and 8 returning missionaries. Many of these Saints had already traveled quite a distance over both land and sea to reach Liverpool. Edward Davis, the returning elder in charge of the traveling party, wrote an engaging account of their travel. He updated his letter at frequent intervals and mailed installments to Apostle George Teasdale, his former mission president in the British Mission, whenever he had a chance. The first letter was mailed from Queenstown, Ireland, the ship’s last brush with land before it set out across the North Atlantic; from New York, reporting the crossing and the bureaucracy involved in landing in the United States, and from his home in Paris, Idaho, to say the company had safely arrived.

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Orchids in the Snow

By Rosa Lee Lloyd

Previous chapter

Chapter 5

Synopsis: Sharon and Sam Wynter, newlyweds from Utah, make many friends in Fairbanks, Alaska, including Angus McFarland, a widower, and his daughter Marie, and Susan Elge from Bristol Bay who has brought her husband Herman to the hospital for an operation. Sharon also meets Sister Jensen, President of the branch Relief Society, who rents the couple a log cabin. Sister Jensen takes Sharon to visit Mary Billings, who is blind. Sam, an engineer, goes on a trip to the North, Sister Jensen goes to visit her daughter in Nome, and Sharon is left alone in the cabin.

Sharry stood near the door clenching her small, firm fists. She could hear two dogs barking, then a girl’s voice saying: “Shush, you two! Don’t act so important!”

Marie! It was Marie McFarland!

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More glimpses of our people in 1914:

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The long of it: A. Virgil Tollestrup (Cedar City, Utah); the short of it: Leonard C. Rynearson (Murray, Utah), at a Southern States Mission conference in Atlanta

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Metamorphosis

By Hugh B. Brown

Change alone is permanent, we’re told;
Change is predetermined and God-sent:
Were present and future cast in static mould,
Mortal men could not be heaven-bent.

Our lives must change with new environment;
To arrive, to stop, were permanently to die.
To gain experience we to mortal life were sent;
Change develops wings with which to fly.

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General Relief Society President Zina D.H. Young addressed the sisters gathered in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square for their annual conference in October, 1896. Among other topics, she noted that, after having done so much to contribute to the building of public facilities in Utah over the past decades, the sisters had no place to call their own. Her vice president (counselor) Sarah M. Kimball – who might be said to have been the originator of the Relief Society, since it was her desire to organize the women of Nauvoo to help build the temple there – echoed Zina’s thoughts.

It was “a humiliation,” Sarah said, for the sisters “to be without a place of our own.”

We ha[ve] contributed to all public places and at all times. Now we want to have a house, and we want land to build it on, and it should be in the shadow of the temple. It should be a place to receive strangers in when they come, a place where letters can be written from and information given.

I think we should vote on this matter, whether you representative women want this building, or not. We want to put it to vote.

The sisters’ vote was unanimous. The time had come for the women of the Church to build a home for themselves.

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