I love learning about the pioneers. One of my favorite things to do with my children is to pull out the life sketches of our ancestors who crossed the plains and read their accounts. I draw great strength from them and their stories of faith, hard work, perseverance, and integrity. If you’ll indulge me today, I hope to share a few of those stories with you today.
Agency
A few weeks ago at BYU one of my old economics professors, actually from St Johns, Brennan Platt, gave a wonderful talk called, “We Chose This! Agency, Atonement, and Joy”
In his talk, he details how his children are all competitive swimmers. Swim meet registrations are completed several weeks beforehand, and by the time it comes along, sometimes his kids had forgotten about signing up for certain events, especially the hard ones. At that moment they would groan, “Why did you sign me up for this?” He then reminds them, “You really did choose this.”
He then details, “There is real power in owning our choices. Acknowledging our choice forces us to revisit why we made the choice.”
I think about that in the context of all the choices we make that affect our whole lives. Choosing to have faith, choosing to be baptized, choosing to marry, choosing to stay. There is real power in owning our choices.
Promised Blessings
Choices come with consequences. In a 2004 talk, Elder James E Faust stated, “As we look into the future, we are going to need to be stronger and more responsible for our choices in a world where people “call evil good, and good evil.” We do not choose wisely if we use our agency in opposition to God’s will or to priesthood counsel. Tomorrow’s blessings and opportunities depend on the choices we make today.”
My great-great grandpa John Bloomfield was faced with a choice that, in his words, “would completely change [his] life and that of [his] posterity.” As a 19 year-old boy set to inherit his uncle’s large farm in Suffolk England, he met the elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Uncle Robert told me that if I was baptized into the Mormon Church he would disinherit me. But the realization that the Gospel was true meant more to me than all the property and money in the world. So I chose to be baptized into the Church. Elder Job Smith baptized me at Hammers Field 1 September 1850. My father and mother were baptized with me on that same date.
About this same time I got the small pox and the Doctor said that I could not possibly live until morning. I asked my mother to have the Mormon Elders come and administer to me. They came and one lay on each side of me and talked to me for a long time. Then they annointed me all over with olive oil and laid their hands upon me and prayed for me. They promised me that I would recover and that not one sore would be left on my body. The next morning I was up and walking around outside when the doctor came. When he first saw me he was frightened because he thought he was looking at my ghost. I calmly reassured him I was alive and completely well.
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In the year 1854 an Elder (Horace Jackson) and myself gave notice that we would hold a meeting at the Old Gravel Pit. A short time before meeting should have begun, a sectarian minister gathered a large congregation and proceeded to our place of meeting. He then chose as his subject, "Who's on the Lord's side?" and began speaking to the people thinking in this way to prohibit us from holding our meeting. The meeting was well under way when we arrived therefore we waited until he had finished his discourse, then he walked off singing and I took his place, choosing for a text the same subject he had spoken and endeavored to show that those who were on the Lord's side were those who kept his commandments. Also what those commandments were. The minister disappeared in the congregation. No sooner had he done so than rocks began whizzing around us. They fell at our feet and all around us. One brushed Brother Jackson's head and yet we were not hit once. One man filled his hat with rocks and advancing to within a few steps of us said that he would hit me and threw all at me. The rocks fell all around my feet but not one hit me. The man crawled to my feet and picked up his hat and beat a retreat. This ended the disturbance and we then continued speaking to the congregation of about five hundred people. Thanks to the minister for the same for he gathered the people for us to speak to.
This persecution, if so it may be called, served to strengthen my testimony as it proved to me that the Lord will protect His servants if they will do His will.
Hard Work & Hard Things
One of the greatest lessons I learn from the pioneers is that of hard work and doing hard things. David O McKay said, “Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, and that love of work is success.” I think that if our definition of a happy life is one where we can lie around all day or not be bothered with difficulty, we’ll never find it. We all know the line, “Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven.”
My great-grandpa Richard Henry describes early life in the colonies in Mexico as being desperately hard, with very little to eat and a lot of work to do.
“While living in Old Mexico, we were quite poor and at times had very little to eat. I remember there was a little stream running though our property and we had some logs across it for a bridge. One time all we had to eat was some crusts of hard bread. My mother gave us each a piece of hard bread and we went down to the stream and lay down on the bridge. We would throw our bread up the stream and catch it in our mouth as it floated down. We repeated that until it was soaked up enough for us to chew it.”
My great-great Grandma Elizabeth Barton talks of crossing the plains,
Life was very hard for me during this time. I crossed the plains when I was very young and walked all the way. I was not a large husky girl but very small and of slight build. When we started I had a good pair of shoes, and when we arrived in Utah, my feet were bare and bleeding and calloused. My shoes were gone so I took some cedar chips, laced them with cow hide and wore these as shoes. My clothes had almost worn out but I still believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the right one. So I stayed and became one of the Latter-day Saints of Zion among the Rocky Mountains. Just like the Elders who came to Liverpool, England told us we could do if we had enough faith and courage. I thank the Lord that I had the faith and courage and made it.
Sacrifice for the Sake of the Gospel
These people made great sacrifices for the sake of the gospel. Even once they crossed the plains and settled, many were asked to settle again. Many of our ancestors were called down to Arizona, New Mexico, and beyond. Over the past couple years I built a house and have been trying to tame some of the land around it. I have a tractor and access to many power tools, and it’s still hard work! I can’t imagine doing it over and over again with the primitive tools of 150 years ago.
My triple great grandpa, Ellis Wiltbank, lived in Eagar. He was made the first Sunday School superintendent and realized that the saints needed material to build their homes with. He went to Greer and built a sawmill which he operated successfully for many years, supplying the wood for many of the homes still in Round Valley.
Each Sunday he walked the 16 miles from his sawmill to Eagar to fulfill his calling on Sunday mornings. He didn’t ride a horse because, “he felt that his farm animals should rest on the Sabbath.”
Another great grandpa of mine was called as Bishop of Ramah, New Mexico. He owned a ranch outside of town and the Stake President asked him to move into town so that he would be more accessible to ward members.
The only empty home in town had dirt floors and they moved there and he milled lumber to have wood floors in that home. He was told that he was to build a new chapel there and for the rest of the time he was a bishop, the construction happened. Toward the end, I guess the people got burned out and he did most of the finish work alone. During the interior plastering, he stayed there 24/7 to keep the fires burning so the plaster would not crack. 10 years after he was called., when the church was completed, they held the St Johns stake conference in the new Ramah church and dedicated it. They also sustained a new bishop that day. The family then moved back to the ranch.
Lessons of Faith
Another of my ancestors, Jesse Wentworth Crosby, had somewhat of a Joseph Smith-like experience that I draw great faith from. His example of earnest seeking and commitment to the answers he received is inspiring for each of us as we go through our journeys of growing our testimonies.
"By this time I had arrived at the 16th year of my age, and I began to see and feel the necessity of joining some people, and belonging to some church. I, as it were awoke from sleep, looked around me and beheld the state of the religious world, and meditated upon it for the first time in my life. Said I to myself, which of all the churches is the Church of the living God, who has heard and answered my prayers? Let me see and hear for myself. I attended churches of the different persuasions with a prayerful heart, but there was an aching void still, I retired day after day to the wood and there, where no human eye could behold, I poured out my prayers and supplications to Almighty God, that He would send some kind messenger called and ordained to Him to guide my footsteps in the path of truth.
On answer to repeated supplications, I received that assurance that calmed my mind and gave me to understand that the truth in its fulness should be unfolded to me. None of the excitements of the day moved me. My feelings were known to God and to Him alone, for I told them to no one on earth.
The time passed on till the summer 1838. I was now in my 18th year when two elders of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints came into my father's neighborhood. I went to hear them preach, what was my astonishment when I heard the speaker declare, "That God had sent them by special revelation, and that a despensation of the Gospel was now revealed from God to man, by the instrumentality of holy angels, and by the voice of God to man: to be preached as a witness to all nations, and kindreds, and people, and then should be the end of the wicked."
Conclusion
John Bloomfield stayed firm in the faith, crossing the ocean, being beaten almost to death by a mob, crossing the plains, losing his wife and several children, settling, re-settling. He ended his autobiography with the following:
Remember, it is only a step to the great beyond, live your lives so that I will always be proud of you. Always stand for that which is right. Be honest in all your dealings. Try always to serve your God, with all your heart, might, mind and strength, and in so doing you will prepare yourselves for a glory that defies the description of man. This is my humble prayer for you, in the name of Jesus Christ.
I join him in his testimony, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.