This interview with Brother Gary Dymock, conducted by Gale Boyd, was recorded in Orem, UT on February 9th, 2017.

While missionaries continue to spark good in the world on a daily basis, it is sometimes difficult to see just how far that ripple effect may go. Brother Gary Dymock’s mission, now completed some sixty years ago, has undoubtedly changed lives.

By the time Bro. Dymock graduated high school in the early 1950’s, the American government had already drafted thousands of young men to fight in the Korean War. One night, while working out in the desert in Tooele, Utah, Bro. Dymock was awakened by his father, who notified him that the bishop had come to visit, urging the young man to come to his office. Naturally intimidated, Dymock was shocked when his bishop conveyed that he and the Stake president had both been recipients of a similar, resounding impression—that the Lord wished for Bro. Dymock to serve a mission.

He expressed both his surprise and hesitation to accept this calling at first, stating: “I had no idea at all, no thought[s] about that. That was the last thing in my mind. I was going to college. I was in love with a young lady, and life was wonderful.”

At the request of his bishop, Bro. Dymock met with his Stake president, a respected member of the community named Alex Dunn. Upon expressing his concerns about leaving due to his mother’s illness, President Dunn once again gave a firm and unwavering answer: “You need to go on a mission, […] and I promise you that if you go on a mission, your mother will be okay. She will be alive when you get home. She will get better every day you’re gone.”

Unable to refuse the blessings promised to him for his service, Bro. Dymock agreed to serve. His bishop then informed the young man that he had felt another impression, just as irrefutable as the last, that Bro. Dymock should obtain his patriarchal blessing. In it was an explicit prediction:  “You will be given the opportunity to travel among the world and touch the lives of many people. You will teach the people of the world.”

At the time, the Church could only send two missionaries per stake out on proselytizing missions. He and his companion arrived in Brisbane, Australia, after eighteen days aboard a passenger ship. Away from the conveniences of the United States, they found themselves quickly grappling to adjust to their new (and extremely humid) environment.

As soon as they arrived, the two young men became the recipients of some exciting news. The mission president had just obtained permission to begin looking for a lot upon which to build a new chapel for the people of Brisbane. Tasked with finding a spot upon which they could build, the two young men continued their work.

One day, after receiving a distinct impression not to go on his usual route, the young Elder Dymock found himself in an area among the beautiful foothills of Brisbane, with a flowing river just underneath. He describes the spirit that penetrated him that day as an “electric shock,” as he turned the corner to find “the most beautiful building lot [he’d] ever seen.” In a frenzy, he called his mission president with an ecstatic proclamation: “We need to buy this lot for the chapel!”

His mission president agreed. In a fateful coincidence, President McKay was to visit Australia in a matter of weeks—”the longest two weeks of [Bro. Dymock’s] life.” When he finally arrived, the prophet was indeed escorted by the two young missionaries and their mission president to the area they believed should be the site of a newly built chapel. After ten or so minutes of walking around the property and gazing over the countryside, President McKay turned to them to inquire if there were any other missionaries serving in an area across the river called Chirnside. He insisted that there should be missionaries sent to that area, as if it were a most urgent matter.

After spending a little more time in the area, President McKay finally set to leave, but not before leaving the young Elder Dymock with a hug and sincere words: “May the Lord bless you.”

Two weeks later, President McKay called Bro. Dymock’s mission president, confirming that the site the young elder found would indeed be the site of the new chapel. Changes were made; on the request of the prophet, Bro. Dymock and many of the other missionaries serving in the area were immediately transferred to Chirnside. No other area, he recalls, had as much success. In just two to three months, their numbers had increased to fifty-five, enough to create the Chirnside branch. Membership in Chirnside grew so exponentially that the area received its own ward, stake, and later became its own mission.

Even more incredible, the building lot that had left its spiritual impression so strongly upon Bro. Dymock did indeed become the site of a chapel.

Now, it is the site of the Brisbane Temple.

In fulfillment of his patriarchal blessing’s great promise to “teach the world,” Bro. Dymock has indeed aided the proliferation of the great work of the Gospel. He and his wife would later travel to New York City on a senior couple mission, as well as serve as temple workers in the capital of the Philippines. His story makes this often repeated sentiment from the scriptures so very true, that “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.”

Brisbane, Australia Temple

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

Hector Bori, whose great-great-grandfather emigrated from Spain in the 1800’s, was a citizen of Communist Cuba in 1959. Along with his parents and 6 siblings, the Bori family inhabited a 6300 acre stretch of property handed down from generation to generation. With a life so ingrained in their cattle and rice farming, the choice to leave was clearly one surrounded by complication.

Hector Bori’s Mother

Hector’s father

The late 1950s saw Cuba in an era of tumultuous political upheaval. With the Cuban Revolution coming to its end, Fidel Castro‘s 26th of July Movement sought to overthrow the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and replace it with the first Communist government on the Western Hemisphere.

Sister Holi Bori, speaking of her husband’s childhood in her own words, remarked on Castro’s methods as being similar to the Adversary, and how their family was faced with a difficult choice:

Much like Satan, who works by degrees, Fidel Castro also worked by degrees to ensnare the Cuban people. Little by little, [Castro] had situated himself as their dictator. First, he took over the media. All newspaper, [as well as] radio and television broadcasts were in the control of the government. And so the propaganda began. Everything the Cuban people read, heard, or watched was informing them that the United States of American was making preparations to invade and take over their island. With nothing to denounce these lies and deceptions, the majority of the people began to believe and be fearful that indeed the U.S. would invade them.

 

My husband’s father was not among those that fell for the rhetoric being spouted by the government. […H]e had a brother that lived in New York, in whom he trusted and who informed him that the US invasion story was false. This belief, however, he made sure to keep to himself. The communist government had put a program in place that would expose those who were against them.

 

Imagine your neighborhood. Now, imagine that one family in your neighborhood is a spy for the government. No one knows who it is. It might be your next door neighbor, or your next door neighbor may think it is you. No one trusted anyone and did not dare to speak ill of Castro or the government, and those that did, many times, disappeared.

 

Next, Castro disarmed the people of all firearms. He said that the Cuban military was in short supply of guns and ammo [and] that in order to prepare and build up their military for the invasion of the U.S., every Cuban patriot had an obligation to help arm the military. And so they did.  The citizens gave over their firearms. With only the government’s form of media and no personal firearms to fight against a repressive government, the only thing left to do to completely oppress the Cuban people would be to indoctrinate the children.

 

Here in the United States, children are taught to stand and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance. Cuban children were taught to stand and pledge allegiance to Fidel Castro. In this pledge, they would acknowledge that Castro gave them everything and was the reason for their happiness. That because of him, they have a home, food, and a school to go to.  No one was allowed to give credit to God for any goodness in their life, [as] it was all credited to Castro. In fact, no religion was allowed after Castro took over. Children were encouraged to turn in their parents to government officials if things were being taught otherwise in the home.

 

This is the environment my husband and his family found themselves in. But in 1964, two drastic things happened that would put this family on the path to recognizing the goodness and love that our Heavenly Father had in store for them.

 

The first thing was when two government officials showed up at their home and informed them that their land, cattle, rice fields and house no longer belonged to them. It now belonged to the government. And because the ranch-hands were still loyal to my husband’s father, the government officials [sentenced] my father-in-law to cleaning out the horse stalls, [making] him take off his shoes and go clean out the manure barefoot in front of his staff.

 

The second thing had to do with the mandatory military service that all male teenagers had to enroll in at the age of 15. My husband’s oldest brother, Percy, was already enlisted, and his second oldest brother, George, was going to turn 15 in a few months and would also have to enlist. This is when the decision was finally made to leave Cuba.

Fleeing Cuba was no easy task. For the large family, separating was a harrowing reality. Sister Bori goes on to mention:

George was the first of the children to leave because the government would not let them all leave at the same time as a family. At that time, you had to get the U.S. through Mexico. George stayed with a family in Mexico who helped him get his visa before leaving for New York to live with his uncle.

 

A year later, Rita and Albert, who were my husband’s older brother and sister, left. Plans were made, and they too were going stay with a family in Mexico. But this time, things did not work out as planned. When they arrived in Mexico, there was no family waiting to take them in.  Rita ended up being taken to live at a Catholic school with nuns. And Albert—who was only 11—after wandering the streets, found a home with a Mexican store owner, where he was put to work.

 

Can you imagine the agony the parents felt when they found out what had happened? How hopeless they must have felt! How heart breaking to know your children were in another country in the hands of people you did not know.  Even though they had a deep conviction that their decision to leave Cuba was right, doubt and guilt crept in. For indeed, they did not know if they and their other children would ever be permitted to leave Cuba.

 

But the Lord knew where He was taking them, and brought about the means to get them there, both physically and spiritually.  You see, the uncle that lived in New York had recently joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He was the one that sponsored the visas for my husband, his mother and father, and their two other children. So, sooner than once thought possible, they had permission to leave Cuba. But there was just one drawback,  [as] the oldest brother, Percy, was still in the military, and government would not give him permission to leave.

 

What a decision to be made! How do you pick between your children?  Stay in Cuba because your oldest son cannot leave or take your 3 younger children to safety, as well as [reuniting] with the ones previously sent to Mexico. I am convinced that the Lord strengthened their conviction to get their family out of Cuba, with the comforting thought that as soon as their son was done with his military service, he too would join them in America. With tears and sadness, they said goodbye to their 17 year old son.

 

While at the airport in Havana before leaving to Mexico, the officials there confiscated their luggage [as well as] took all their money and wedding rings from off their fingers. They arrived in Mexico with literally just the clothes on their backs.  There, they were reunited with Rita and Albert. They obtained their visas and were soon on a plane heading for New York.

 

Little did they know that two LDS missionaries were at the airport waiting to pick them up. And little did they understand what an impact these two missionaries would have on their family.

In his talk, Brother Bori picks up the story here, going on to reminisce about his family’s conversion, as well as the trials and triumphs that come with the experience of being a brand new immigrant in the United States.

And to make a long story short, all 8 of us—me, my father and mother and 5 of my siblings—were baptized three months later. We lived in a small 3 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, New York and we loved the United States of America! Even though we could not speak a single word of English, the members of the ward in Manhattan welcomed us with open arms.

 

In fact, to go to church on Sunday, we would have to take the subway, and being only 8 years old, I was scared to death to go on it. But still, my father was very faithful and we would go every week. It was the only time we would go out as a family.

 

Even though we love the U.S., living in Manhattan was so different from what we were used to. No trees, no grass, no open spaces, only concrete and skyscrapers. At least, that is how I remember it.

 

Through my Uncle, my father got a job working at the Presbyterian Hospital in lower Manhattan, which was a hospital [as well as] a learning institution for doctors in training. He was so thankful for that job.

 

But, I need to tell you a little about my dad. He was born in the saddle, as they say. A full blown cowboy. I had a chance to see for myself his roping skills several years later. We had some calves that had gotten out of their pen, and all us kids were running around trying to catch them. My father finally grabbed a rope and one by one he was able to lasso the back legs of each one of the calves with just one try. My little brother turned to me and said, “He is a real cowboy.” Ranching and being a cowboy was in his blood.

 

Can a person be grateful and still dread their job? I would say yes, because my father was grateful that he was able to work and have the means to provide for his family, yet he dreaded his job. [And] I think most people would. You see, his job was to take the donated cadavers that the hospital received, wash them, and put them in a cold storage. Then, when one of the professors at the hospital needed a body part for that day’s lesson, it was my father job to go to where the cadavers were stored, obtain it and take it to the classroom.

 

With these things in mind, consider the sadness my father must have felt over his job and knowing that his children would be brought up living in the city.

 

As children, we were used to running and playing outside at our ranch in Cuba. Now we were stuck inside, all 6 of us, and constantly being told to stay quiet, so we did not disturb the neighbors below. Often times, being kids we would forget, becoming a bit loud and rambunctious, then the tenants below would come up to our apartment and complain to my parents. We were then put to coloring or sitting and watching TV. But I was an 8 year old boy, and I had tons of energy! I never lasted very long in either one of those activities.

 

I can testify to you that our Father in Heaven knows us and has a plan for us. He knew that my family had a “need” for open spaces.

 

It just [so] happened that on one particular Sunday, a member of the Church who lived in Utah was stopping over in New York before heading to Miami,  and was attending the sacrament meeting at our ward.

 

Was this a coincidence?

 

He was on assignment for Reader’s Digest doing research on Cuban immigrants. He was very excited when he learned about our family and ask if he could interview us. His name was Brother Darryl Stoddard. A time was soon set, to come to our apartment and have a chat with us, well, mostly with my father.

 

Picture this—my dad not knowing any English and Brother Stoddard not knowing any Spanish. With the help of my Uncle, the interview was translated back and forth. In the course their conversation, it came up that my father was unhappy with his job and having to raise his children in the city. Brother Stoddard’s response was, “Let me see what I can do.”

 

In all honesty, my father did not think he would be able to do anything, but two weeks later he received a phone call [asking] if he would be interested in managing a fruit welfare farm in Payson, Utah, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My father was very interested, so the Church flew him out to Utah [where] he toured the 180 acre farm, which included a 3 bedroom house.

 

“How perfect, how ideal,” you might say, and it was, except there was only one problem. My father knew nothing about fruit trees! He knew cattle and rice. But he was told not to worry, [as] “the surrounding farmers would teach him.”

 

He accepted the job and the Church flew my whole family from New York out to Salt Lake City in February 1969. We arrived at the Payson farm at one in the morning.

 

All the way from the airport to the farm it was snowing. This was the first time we had ever seen snow.

 

I want to share with you the goodness and generosity of the West Mountain Ward in Payson. We went inside the house at the farm and found that the cupboards in the kitchen were as full as could be, with food of all kinds, and the refrigerator and freezer was stocked. There were plates, cups, utensils, pots, pans. The home was furnished with table & chairs, couches, TV, beds, dressers. All the beds had fresh linens, blankets, sheets, pillows. And on top of the children’s beds were new toys, for each of us kids.

 

All this was done and donated by the members of the West Mountain Ward.

 

The love and kindness that they showed our family is a true testament of living the gospel and loving one’s neighbor.

 

My father started work immediately on the farm and the surrounding farmers did help and teach him. Three years later, he won the “Utah Valley Fruit Growers“ farmer of the year award.

 

We were all sealed to our parents one year later in the Salt Lake Temple. All, except one. My oldest brother, who had to stay behind in the military, was still in Cuba.

 

Year after year passed, and still the Cuban Government would not let him leave. They kept requiring that we send money, so year after year we sent funds. My two older brothers and I would work every summer. We did not see a dime from our checks. We would just sign our checks over to our dad. In total, we ended up sending thousands of dollars to Cuba to get my brother out.

 

Finally, after 13 years, he was able to leave and join us here in Utah.

Some of his family, unfortunately, still fell victim to the totalitarian regime. Sister Bori went on to describe:

My husband’s Uncle, who still lived in Cuba, was having some health problems and went to the hospital there, where he was told that there was nothing they could do from him. Cuba supposedly has free healthcare for their citizens, only they have very limited medication. If you are not in the upper class, or if you are older, you do not get treatment because they do not want to waste any medication on you. He was in such pain that he ended up going home and committing suicide by hanging.

Despite such hardship, Brother Bori’s talk ends on a sweet note, harkening back to the testimony he has gained by overcoming these trials.

From the moment we joined the Church, my family has been blessed beyond measure.

 

All my siblings have been married in the temple. My parents have 29 grandchildren and 60 great-grandchildren.

 

All are members of the Church.

 

From having a comfortable life in Cuba to having everything taken from us. From leaving our home to come to a new country. From not having religion to finding the gospel.

 

The Lord has been involved in our lives. I don’t believe in coincidences.

 

Every good thing that has ever happened to me, I can attribute to my Heavenly Father.

Hector and Holly Bori have been married for 37 years, have three daughters, and are the proud grandparents of nine. They love the mountains and spend every minute they can camping and four-wheeling.

Hector and Holly Bori

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

Every April and October, the Mormon community knows what time it is: conference time. But it didn’t start out that way. For the first several years of the church, a conference could be called at any time, usually when the Prophet Joseph Smith had business to discuss, problems to solve, or new revelations to announce. As conferences became more regular and Church membership grew, however, the purpose and practice of conference became more defined to the two-day spiritual feast it is today. Here are a few things that have been done during conference over the years, but that we no longer do nowadays.

1. Pass the Sacrament

The first recognized conference of the Church was held on June 9, 1830, only a short few months after the Church was organized. The first several conferences looked more like a modern-day sacrament meeting, with an opening hymn, passing of the sacrament, confirming of members, and teaching from the Prophet. Though this was discontinued as Church membership grew, the sacrament has also been passed in a special, more recent session of conference in October 1942 at the start of WWII. The passing of the sacrament at that conference session was followed by a testimony meeting.

2. Confirm Members and Ratify Revelations

Confirming members of the Church is now done on a local level—otherwise we imagine a good part of conference would be spent on this! In addition to confirming members, conference attendees would also vote to ratify newly announced revelations. This set the framework for our current method of “common consent” voting. For example, it was at a conference gathering that members voted for the Book of Commandments to be published. April 1844 marks the turning point of conferences from business meetings to instructional ones.

Photo from Deseret News by Tom Smart

3. Hold Church Courts

One of the purposes of early conferences was to unify and organize the Saints. One of the ways it did that was by settling member disputes and moral transgressions, including disfellowshipping, excommunicating, and hopefully future reinstating. Eventually a separate church court evolved to take care of both these secular and religious concerns.

4. Announce Colonization and Missionary Assignments

Not only did early church members attend conference not knowing who would be called to settle a new area or go on a mission, but they did so earlier in the year than we currently do. By holding conference in September, it allowed missionaries called from the pulpit to have time to leave before the winter storms closed mountain passes.

Bowery (right) that housed the first general conference in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848. Photo from LDS.org.

5. Hold Conference on April 6th

Once conference began to be more consistent, at least a few sessions took place on April 6th, no matter what day of the week it was. Before that, conferences were simply called when needed, no matter the month or day. The first consistent pattern of conference every six months in April and October is traced back to around 1840.

Photo of Tabernacle and foundation of Salt Lake Temple from Deseret News Archives.

6. Hear from Speakers Besides the General Authorities or General Officers

Past speakers at general conference have included stake and mission presidents, as well as representatives of the United States and Boy Scouts of America. Even the chief of staff of the United States Army has had time at the pulpit. Now we can expect to hear only from General Authorities and Auxiliaries.

7. Hold Conference Outside of the Conference Center

Before the Conference Center was built, general conferences were hosted in many other places. Early on they were in Fayette, New York; Kirtland, Ohio; and Council Bluffs, Iowa, while later ones were held in places like Logan and Provo, Utah. One special conference in 1893 was even held in the Salt Lake Temple so the building could be dedicated. The place many people remember conference being held in, however, is the Salt Lake Tabernacle, which hosted general conference from 1867 to 2000.

The last conference in the Tabernacle in October 1999. Photo from Deseret News by Jeffrey D. Allred.

8. Publicly Account for Church Expenditures

Starting in 1908 an auditing committee began reporting on the Church’s financial matters. Included in the report was usually the amount of money spent on individual categories such as maintenance and buildling cost of temples or church schools, as well as the amount paid to the poor out of tithing and other funds. By April 1959, the Church no longer accounted for specific expenditures, but began giving the more generalized audit of numbers of stakes, missionaries, and temples we currently hear every April.

Images of the Financial Statements from April 1915 and April 1935 conferences.

9. Hold More Than Two Days of Conference

Photo of Temple Square in 1937 from Salt Lake Tribune Archives.

For most of conference history, sessions lasted for three days, and some sessions were devoted to specific topics. In 1867, members even voted to extend the conference to four days for a short time. By April 1977, however the practice of a two-day conference over Saturday and Sunday was started.

10. Have Speakers Talk Without Prepared Notes or Time Limits

In early conferences, speakers relied on divine inspiration to guide their remarks. Attendees stayed in their seats until the speakers had said everything they wanted to say—whether that meant five minutes or an hour and five minutes. When conference began being broadcast on television, time limits became necessary so that station breaks would not interrupt a speaker.

Original Content Link can be found here.

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

Brigham Young: Taking on the Visage of Joseph Smith

After the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, the apostles gathered in to Nauvoo from their missions. Sidney Rigdon, estranged from the Church, now wanted to be its “guardian.” He called a conference for a certain date, but it was scheduled by Elder Marks a bit later, for Thursday, August 8, 1844, after Brigham Young and other apostles finally arrived in Nauvoo.

The meeting’s purpose was to sustain a new leader of the Church. Rigdon had met with the apostles, who were united quickly.  The apostles firmly felt they held all the keys of the kingdom.

Rigdon claimed to have had a vision, an extension of the one he shared with Joseph that became Section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It failed to impress the Brethren. Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal that Sidney’s statement was a “long story. It was a kind of second class vision.”

A solemn assembly was called for later that day.

On that day a miracle occurred before the body of the Church—Brigham Young was transfigured before the people, and the succession crisis of the Church was resolved…. Sidney Rigdon spoke for an hour and a half about his desires to be the guardian of the Church, but he awakened no emotion and said nothing that marked him as the true leader. Brigham Young told the audience that he would rather have spent a month mourning the dead Prophet than so quickly attend to the business of appointing a new shepherd. While he was speaking, he was miraculously transfigured before the people.

People of all ages were present, and they later recorded their experiences. Benjamin F. Johnson, twenty-six at that time, remembered, “As soon as he [Brigham Young] spoke I jumped upon my feet, for in every possible degree it was Joseph’s voice, and his person, in look, attitude, dress and appearance was Joseph himself, personified; and I knew in a moment the spirit and mantle of Joseph was upon him.”

Zina Huntington, who was a young woman twenty-one years old at that time, said “President Young was speaking. It was the voice of Joseph Smith—not that of Brigham Young. His very person was changed. … I closed my eyes. I could have exclaimed, I know that is Joseph Smith’s voice! Yet I knew he had gone. But the same spirit was with the people.”

This miracle brought the Saints in unison under the leadership of Brigham Young. Read more in Church History in the Fulness of Times.

Brigham Young: True Religion Means Rescuing Stranded Pioneers

“As the Saints prepared for general conference in Salt Lake City in October 1856, everyone assumed that the arrival of the third handcart company ended the immigration that year. But Franklin D. Richards, who had come into the valley two days prior to the conference, announced that two more handcart companies and two ox-cart supply trains were still on the plains and desperately needed food and clothing to finish the journey.

“When Brigham Young learned that these companies were still on the plains, he spoke to the Saints who had gathered for general conference. The meeting was actually held on 5 October, one day before the conference officially convened. Brigham Young said:

“The text will be, ‘to get them here.’ …

“I shall call upon the Bishops this day, I shall not wait until to-morrow, nor until next day, for 60 good mule teams and 12 or 15 wagons. …

“I will tell you all that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.”

The response was impressive. Sixteen wagon loads of food and supplies were quickly assembled; and on the morning of 7 October, sixteen good four-mule teams and twenty-seven hardy young men (known as Brigham Young’s “Minute Men”) headed eastward with the first provisions. More help was solicited and obtained from all parts of the territory. By the end of October, two hundred and fifty teams were on the road to give relief” (Church History in the Fulness of Times).

Thomas B. Marsh: His Apostasy and Return to the Church

Thomas B. Marsh had once been President of the Twelve but lost his testimony, rebelled against the Church, and left. Penitent, he made his way to Salt Lake City and was invited by Prophet Brigham Young to speak to the membership of the Church in the Bowery in Salt Lake on Sunday, September 6, 1857.

Brother Marsh said,

I have sought diligently to know the Spirit of Christ since I turned my face Zionward, and I believe I have obtained it. I have freTquently wanted to know how my apostacy began, and I have come to the conclusion that I must have lost the Spirit of the Lord out of my heart.

The next question is, “How and when did you lose the Spirit?” I became jealous of the Prophet, and then I saw double, and overlooked everything that was right, and spent all my time in looking for the evil; and then, when the Devil began to lead me, it was easy for the carnal mind to rise up, which is anger, jealousy, and wrath. I could feel it within me; I felt angry and wrathful; and the Spirit of the Lord being gone, as the Scriptures say, I was blinded, and I thought I saw a beam in brother Joseph’s eye, but it was nothing but a mote, and my own eye was filled with the beam; but I thought I saw a beam in his, and I wanted to get it out; and, as brother Heber says, I got mad, and I wanted everybody else to be mad. I talked with Brother Brigham and Brother Heber, and I wanted them to be mad like myself; and I saw they were not mad, and I got madder still because they were not. Brother Brigham, with a cautious look, said, “Are you the leader of the Church, brother Thomas?” I answered, “No.” “Well then,” said he, “Why do you not let that alone?”

Well, this is about the amount of my hypocrisy–I meddled with that which was not my business. But let me tell you, my brethren and friends, if you do not want to suffer in body and mind, as I have done,–if there are any of you that have the seeds of apostacy in you, do not let them make their appearance, but nip that spirit in the bud; for it is misery and affliction in this world, and destruction in the world to come (BYU.edu).

Wilford Woodruff: The End of Earthly Polygamy

Under the Edmunds-Tucker Acts, the U.S. government hoped to end polygamy. The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 also included provisions aimed at destroying the Church as a political and economic entity. The law officially dissolved The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a legal corporation and required the Church to forfeit to the government all property in excess of fifty thousand dollars.

Many of its leaders, husbands, and fathers were imprisoned. Wives were forced to testify against their husbands, voting rights were curtailed, and life became very difficult for the Saints.

Wilford Woodruff was 80 when he began to lead the Church. Although arrests and imprisonments caused families to suffer, the greatest problem for the Church was its inability to acquire and hold the funds necessary to build temples, do missionary work, publish material, and provide for the welfare of the Saints. It was the end of August when President Woodruff received confirmation that the U.S. government, in spite of an 1888 agreement promising that temples would not be disturbed, was going to confiscate them.

President Woodruff said later that the Lord had shown him by revelation exactly what would take place if plural marriage did not cease. The utter destruction of the Church. After a great spiritual struggle, Woodruff drafted  the Manifesto, now Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants, ending polygamy among the Saints.

General conference convened Saturday morning, 4 October 1890, and lasted three days. It was on the third day of the conference that President George Q. Cannon announced the Manifesto and then asked Orson F. Whitney, then bishop of the Salt Lake City 18th Ward, to read the document. The Saints in attendance, recognizing the authority of the Prophet and the Brethren, unanimously accepted it (from Church History in the Fulness of Times).

Lorenzo Snow: Pay your Tithing

Even after Prophet Lorenzo Snow attached the punishment of excommunication for those still practicing polygamy, the Church did not recover financially. The Church went about $300,000 in debt as a direct result of the Edmunds-Tucker Act. It was also taking care of the families of men jailed for plural marriage, as well as their legal fees and court costs and its own legal expenses.

Tithing revenues had declined in the 1880s because members had been reluctant to contribute when the federal government was confiscating the money. The Church was forced to borrow money from worldly financial institutions. President Lorenzo Snow prayed long and hard about the situation, desiring to use the Church’s resources for forwarding the Lord’s work, and to bring it to a sound financial situation.

He visited Southern Utah during a period of terrible drought. On Wednesday, 17 May 1899, at the opening session of the conference in the St. George Tabernacle, President Snow told the Saints that “we are in your midst because the Lord directed me to come; but the purpose of our coming is not clearly known at the present, but this will be made known to me during our sojourn among you.”

LeRoi C. Snow, son of the President, who was reporting the conference for the Deseret News, recalled what happened: “All at once father paused in his discourse. Complete stillness filled the room. I shall never forget the thrill as long as I live. When he commenced to speak again his voice strengthened and the inspiration of God seemed to come over him, as well as over the entire assembly. His eyes seemed to brighten and his countenance to shine. He was filled with unusual power. Then he revealed to the Latter-day Saints the vision that was before him.”

President Snow told the Saints that he could see that the people had neglected the law of tithing and that the Church would be relieved of debt if members would pay a full and honest tithing. He then said that the Lord was displeased with the Saints for failing to pay their tithing and promised them that if they would pay their tithes the drought would be removed and they would have a bounteous harvest.

Under inspiration, he had set in motion the program that would, by 1907, completely free the Church from debt. Many Saints testified that not only were the windows of heaven opened to save the Church, but those who followed this divine law were spiritually and temporally blessed as well (Church History in the Fulness of Times).

Boyd K. Packer: Spiritual Crocodiles

Stories always make for the most memorable General Conference talks, and this one by Boyd K. Packer stays with the listener forever. We sometimes think we know the lay of the land and fail to see the dangers around us and fail to heed those who do.

Elder Packer gave this talk in April 1976 and aimed it especially toward the youth of the Church.

“The antelope, particularly, were very nervous. They would approach the mud hole, only to turn and run away in great fright. I could see there were no lions about and asked the guide why they didn’t drink. His answer, and this is the lesson, was ‘Crocodiles.’

“I knew he must be joking and asked him seriously, ‘What is the problem?’ The answer again: ‘Crocodiles.’

“Nonsense,” I said. ‘There are no crocodiles out there. Anyone can see that.’”

Bruce R McConkie: His Final Testimony

Actually called The Purifying Power of Gethsemane, this moving talk is remembered with affection and gratitude by all who heard it. Bruce R. was dying of cancer at the time. He delivered this talk in April General Conference, 1985, and died a short time later on April 19th. This was his final, emotional testimony.

“And now, as pertaining to this perfect atonement, wrought by the shedding of the blood of God—I testify that it took place in Gethsemane and at Golgotha, and as pertaining to Jesus Christ, I testify that he is the Son of the Living God and was crucified for the sins of the world. He is our Lord, our God, and our King. This I know of myself independent of any other person.

“I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.

“But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way.”

Ezra Taft Benson: Beware of Pride

President Ezra Taft Benson delivered this address in April 1989 General Conference. It is a landmark talk on the evils of pride.

BONUS: BYU Devotionals by Hugh B. Brown

Profile of a Prophet

God is the Gardener

It is important not only that you keep growing but that you be versatile, adaptive, and unafraid to venture. In other words, be up to date. Seek to obtain a certain flexibility of mind that will inspire you to listen, to learn, and to adapt as you move forward into a new and ever-expanding universe.

Original Content Link can be found here.

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

WASHINGTON — The National Park Foundation has received a grant from the Polaris Foundation to help expand access to the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area by enhancing the Arapeen OHV Trail System in the Manti-LaSal National Forest.

The improvements will begin this summer and will include the addition of road base to the upper 6.6 miles of Manti Canyon from the intersection of North Fork to Skyline Drive (Arapeen OHV Trail No. 1).

“The Arapeen OHV Trail System is one of Utah’s great high-mountain trails. It is open to side by sides, ATVs, 4×4 vehicles and motorcycles. The best time to ride is July through September,” Kevin Christensen, Sanpete County’s economic development director, said in a statement announcing the grant.

Other Arapeen Trail System projects completed or underway include work on trails No. 4 in Mt. Pleasant Canyon; No. 42 in New Canyon near Ephraim; No. 35 in 6-Mile Canyon near Sterling; and No. 37 in Manti Canyon. In addition to these trail improvement projects, the trail system is also investing in new facilities, adding a trailside restroom along trail No. 35.

The Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area was established in 2006 for the purpose of commemorating the efforts and sacrifices made by Mormon pioneers in the early years of their settlement across central and southern Utah.

Original Content Link can be found here.

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

It should have been a simple question: Last week, Trump counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka was asked by a radio host whether the president believed that Islam was a religion. Instead of coming back with a quick yes—of course it’s a religion—he demurred. “This is not a theological seminary,” he said. “This is the White House, and we’re not going to get into theological debates.”

It wasn’t that he’d been caught off guard. It was the second time he’d been asked by the same NPR host, Steve Inskeep. The first time, Gorka had evaded the question in a different way: “I think you should ask him that question. I’m not a spokesperson for the president,” he said.

The question has been dogging Trump advisers for months. At a conference in Dallas last August for the anti-Muslim group ACT for America, Michael Flynn, who was recently forced to step down from his post as President Trump’s national security adviser, said Islam was not a religion but a “political ideology” that “hides behind the notion of it being a religion.”

What is going on here? There’s no serious debate, theological or otherwise, about whether Islam is a religion. Any basic primer on world religions will teach you that there are 1.7 billion Muslims in the world; that observant Muslims practice the “Five Pillars of Islam,” by praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, going on pilgrimage to Mecca, giving alms to the poor, and testifying that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet. I have been a religious studies professor for over a quarter century and I have never heard anyone in my field question whether the world’s second-largest religion is really a religion.

But if there’s no theological precedent for this, there’s definitely a political one. American politics has a long history of questioning the “real” status of religions—generally with an eye to stripping their members of constitutional rights. In the past it wasn’t Muslims who were under fire, however. It was Roman Catholics and Mormons.

The colonies that later became the United States were largely settled by Protestants, and they brought the anti-Catholic biases of the Protestant Reformation with them. There weren’t many Catholics to hate, however, until Ireland’s potato famine of the 1840s sent many in search of a better life across the Atlantic. Germans came too, and French Canadians, turning Roman Catholicism into America’s largest Christian denomination by 1850. Many Protestants responded with hostility to what they saw as a threat to their dominance. And they responded much the same to the invention and spread of Mormonism also in the middle of the 19th century.

In attacking Catholics and Mormons, the ancestors of Gorka and Flynn and other anti-Muslim culture warriors claimed that these growing religious groups were un-Christian, immoral, and un-American. In short, they were theological imposters, amoral villains and traitors to the nation—labels hate groups now widely apply to Muslims. But some went further in their efforts to safeguard Protestant America, arguing that Catholicism and Mormonism weren’t really religions at all. To wage cultural war on these fake religions, they argued, was not to violate our constitutional right to religious liberty. It was to safeguard it.

This wasn’t just a fringe position. Samuel Morse is remembered today as the inventor of the Morse code. He was also one of the leading members of the alt-right of his time. A nativist and Protestant nationalist radicalized by a visit to Rome in 1830, Morse repeatedly sounded the alarm against the dangers posed by Catholics and other immigrants to the lives and liberties of “native Americans.” Like white nationalists today who view Islam as a Trojan horse secreting terrorists into the heartland under the cloak of religious liberty, Morse wrote of American Protestants as the “dupes” of their own hospitality in his 1835 book Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States. The “infallibly intolerant” faith of Rome, he wrote, was leaching “into every nook and corner of the land.” American Protestants must not allow the “political designs” of the Vatican to be “shielded from attack” by the “sacred cloak” of so-called religion.

Morse portrayed ordinary Catholics more as victims than perpetrators—cogs in the machinery of “Popery.” But he was apoplectic over the machinations of the Roman Catholic order of the Jesuits, which he described as “a secret society, a sort of Masonic order, with superadded features of revolting odiousness, and a thousand times more dangerous.” Regarding “the impression that the order of Jesuits is a purely religious Society … and therefore comes with the protection of our laws, and must be tolerated,” Morse wrote, “there cannot be a greater mistake. It was from the beginning a political organization, an absolute Monarchy masked by religion.”

Morse recognized the irony of refusing to tolerate the intolerant, and of denying freedom of religion in the name of freedom of religion, but he refused and denied nonetheless. “Americans will not be cowed into silence by the cries of persecution, intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism,” he promised, adding that when it came to Roman Catholicism, he would proudly “glory in intolerance.”

The anti-Mormon culture wars were the most wide-ranging assault on any religion in American history. The state of Missouri and the U.S Army waged war against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mobs killed its missionaries and burned down its places of worship. President Chester Arthur decried Mormons in four straight State of the Union addresses. Congress took away their suffrage and seized church property. The House of Representatives and the Senate both refused to seat duly elected Mormons. And the Supreme Court, in its first decision on the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, ruled that religious liberty extended only to belief, not to the controversial Mormon practice of “plural marriage.”

And Mormons, too, were told that their religion was not really a religion. Many anti-Mormons argued that they were opposed not to the LDS Church but to its practice of polygamy. “It is not a matter of religion,” said Rep. John Letcher of Virginia. “It is a matter of vice.” But other anti-Mormon culture warriors went further, insisting that Mormonism wasn’t just a false religion or an immoral one: It wasn’t really a religion at all. It was a front for sexual license or political or economic gain (or all three). Some put the term religion in scare quotes, as in “the vileness and villainies of [their] ‘religion.’” The Rev. A. J. Bailey, a Congregationalist minister from Odgen, Utah, was more explicit, insisting that Mormonism “is not a religion according to the American idea and the United States Constitution.”

But that’s not precisely the argument Sebastian Gorka is making. In an emerging field known as “agnotology,” scholars describe how politicians, lobbyists, and corporations sow the seeds of doubt to advance their own purposes. Sometimes our ignorance is as simple as not yet knowing how to count to 10. But at other times ignorance is deliberately engineered. In their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway describe how corporations cultivate doubt on questions from acid rain to tobacco smoking to climate change in order to profit economically and to overturn government regulations.

That is what Gorka is doing in his rope-a-dope interviews with NPR. He isn’t asserting, as televangelist Pat Robertson did in 2007, that “Islam is not a religion—it is a worldwide political movement bent on domination of the world.” He is doing something more subtle and more dangerous, something akin to what Trump and his supporters did with President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and his Christian faith. Trump and other “birthers” did not typically say outright that Obama was born in Kenya: They just suggested that he might have been. And while some did assert that Obama is a Muslim, most just called the question. This strategy has been extraordinarily successful. Obama is a churchgoing Christian born in Hawaii, and yet in surveys conducted during the past year, 41 percent of Republicans said they did not believe he was born in the United States, and two-thirds of Trump supporters said they believe Obama is a Muslim.

In a 2011 interview with Fox News, Trump played the agnotologist to perfection, calling into question both Obama’s faith and his birth: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that.”

This is the playbook out of which Gorka is operating. Don’t baldly assert what we know to be false. Just call what we know to be true into question—turn it into a matter of “debate.” When Gorka says he does not want to engage in a “theological debate” over whether Islam is a religion, he is not just begging off a question the way politicians so often do. He is engaging in the far more toxic flimflam of other “merchants of doubt,” by suggesting that there’s a debate here to be had.

In another arena of agnotology—Holocaust denial—Emory professor Deborah Lipstadt has famously refused to debate Holocaust deniers. The Holocaust happened. That fact is not a matter of debate. So why debate it? To do so is like engaging in a debate about whether the Earth is flat.

A “debate” about whether Islam is a religion is similarly pointless. Islam is a religion. Why debate it? To engage “merchants of doubt” on this “question” is to engage in a sleight of hand that seeks to legitimize the un-American and unconstitutional treatment of Muslims as second-class citizens—by denying them the First Amendment rights that all of us enjoy. And yfou don’t have to be a theologian, or a religious studies professor, to know that.

Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and the author of  Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections): The Battles That Define America from Jefferson’s Heresies to Gay Marriage (HarperOne).

You can find the original content link here.

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

“Why anybody should hold a grudge against a barber shop is more than the citizens of Mechanicville can understand today,” The Saratogian reports.

Investigators have “not the slightest clue” to explain why someone apparently set off a bomb in George Stone’s Viall Avenue barber shop early this morning. The explosion “roused most of the residents from their beds, and laid the barber shop flat in ruins.” It was powerful enough to blow the shop’s back door 150 feet away from the building.

The only physical clue is a foot-long piece of fuse. Stone “was at a loss to account for the occurrence, and could think of no one who had any reason to blow up his shop.” His losses are estimated at $500; it’s unclear whether Stone was insured.

THE MORMON MENACE?

“Another Civil War, this time between the East and the West, rather than the North and the South, is predicted by Mrs. Lulu Loveland Shepherd unless the Christians of the East at once rouse themselves and throttle the power of the Mormon church,” The Saratogian reports.

Representing the anti-Mormon National Reform Association, Shepherd issues a dire warning to the audience at First Presbyterian Church tonight. Mormonism, she claims, is on the brink of taking effective political control of the United States.

Mormons allegedly control the governments of eleven western states. “When two more states are within their power the Mormons will be in a position to control the United States Senate and then they will begin to carry out their sworn purpose of choking polygamy down the throats of the people of the United States.”

Mormon political power is fueled by Mormon wealth, the lecturer claims. Mormons reportedly dominate the American sugar industry, while the Great Salt Lake in their Utah bastion has “sufficient salt to salt down the earth for a million years.” In addition, the Latter Day Saints control 65% of the stock of “all western railroads,” according to Shepherd.

Woodrow Wilson was reelected President in the closely-contested 1916 election due to Mormon influence, Shepherd claims. Wilson, a Democrat, overcame Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes’ strength in the Eastern U.S. thanks to a “last moment” switch by LDS president Joseph Smith, the nephew of the church founder of the same name.

Shepherd warns of the subtle ways Mormons use to win people over, from the tourist attraction of the Mormon Tabernacle to a swarm of missionaries all over the country.

“If there is not a Mormon missionary in this audience it is the first time since I have been speaking in the Capital district,” Shepherd tells the Saratoga gathering.

— Kevin Gilbert

Original Source available here.

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

Agnes Veronika Erdös and Gustav Palm in front of the temple.

Agnes Veronika Erdös and Gustav Palm experienced World War II under vastly different conditions: she as a prisoner in a concentration camp and he as an SS soldier. Amazingly, the two would fall in love, help each other heal, and embrace a common faith in God that would lead them to find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Agnes Erdös was an only child, born of Jewish parents but baptized into the Catholic church with her family when she was 9 years old. Though she lived a rather carefree childhood, her life was turned upside down when Hitler invaded Poland. Because of their Jewish descent, she and her parents were treated as Jews and were sent to a ghetto in Nazi-invaded Hungary.

In 1944, SS soldiers emptied the ghetto where Agnes and her parents had been living, whisking everyone onto a freight car and from there to a warehouse in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary—their first stop on the way to Auschwitz.

In distant Norway, when news of war between England and Germany came, Gustav Palm felt it was far away and cared little about it. But when Germany invaded Norway, Gustav, with little political knowledge and no one to turn to for advice, decided to join the National Socialist Party, which he found full of bold ideas and ambitious members.

In 1941, Gustav was offered a job as a traffic policeman in the city, where he was confused to be put through harsh military training. However, Gustav’s first assignment in 1942 was not as a traffic policeman, but as a guard at the newly opened Berg prison camp. He quickly realized, “We, as guards, were also prisoners, even though technically we had our freedom. None of us had voluntarily sought the task we were tricked into. The Nazism I had been in contact with so far was not at all what I had imagined it to be. I had simply been very naïve. I was now fully convinced that the organization to which I belonged was wrong.”

To escape life as a prison guard, Gustav joined the Waffen-SS Ski Ranger Battalion Norway. He believed that he “would be able to support Finland’s cause against Communism but had to do so in the uniform of a Nazi Waffen-SS soldier.”

Early Blessings

July 6, 1944, Zalaegerszeg, Hungary

After being held in Zalaegerszeg for three weeks, Agnes and her family were loaded onto another railcar with the rest of the Jewish prisoners. The next morning, hours away from entering Auschwitz, Agnes’s father woke her to give her a father’s blessing.

Though it was not written on paper, the words of the blessing were recorded on Agnes’s heart: “Father told me that in spite of much suffering, I would survive. I was young and of a pure heart. Father’s spirit would protect me so that I would eventually find ‘the truth.’ He assured me that in the future, we would be reunited with God and His Son Jesus Christ.” Though she didn’t realize it at the time, her father’s blessing would become a lifeline for Agnes. She reflected on its words many times throughout the war and drew great strength and comfort from its promises.

Early 1944, Hallein, Austria

A week after arriving in the Waffen-SS boot camp in Hallein, Gustav became severely ill with scarlet fever and diphtheria, quickly followed by a throat disease. When he finally recovered enough to return to camp, the officers found him too weak to train and sent him home to his family in Onsöy, Norway, for a few weeks. Gustav was grateful for this experience: “Because I was sick, I did not deploy with my unit when they were sent to Finland to fight the Russians. Later, I found out that my sickness was a blessing in disguise because everyone in that unit, save just a few, was killed.”

Narrow Escapes

July 8–9, 1944, Auschwitz, Poland

Arriving at Auschwitz, Agnes and her mother were placed in a line with the old and weak women destined for death. At her mother’s urging, and to the astonishment of fellow prisoners who had just seen others shot for the same act, Agnes safely dashed across a platform to join the healthy line. That was the last time she would see either of her parents.

Not long after her escape to the healthy line, she left the group to find a better barrack to sleep in. When morning came she felt prompted to leave, later recalling, “Israel’s God had heard my father’s blessing thus far, and there it was fulfilled. Once again, I was comforted. Had I remained where I slept the first night, I would have ended up in the gas chambers. I was overcome with a peaceful feeling that I also felt many times during the remaining period of my captivity.”

September 1944, the Baltic front, Latvia

When Gustav was transferred to the front lines, he was discouraged, recalling, “I thought morosely, ‘It is here I shall either live or die.’” He was chosen with six others to head what was deemed a suicidal attack on the Russian front. As they stormed down a hill, Gustav remembers losing his helmet in the middle of all the gunshots and tanks. He made it to the valley, but a bullet grazed his face and another pierced his thigh. “As sure as I lived, I could have been dead,” he says. “I also clearly remember feeling ordered by someone during my attack to take a step to the right. Which I did. That probably saved the bullet from hitting me directly in the face.”

Faithful Courage

Throughout the course of the war, both Agnes and Gustav stood up for what they knew was right—even in the most dangerous of circumstances.

In one instance, Agnes refused to report a food theft—and paid the price for her courage by being demoted from a German’s secretary to a toilet scrubber in a bombed out factory. Gustav likewise allowed a couple to keep a stash of hidden meat that he should have confiscated or destroyed. He reflects, “That choice I made was one of the first conscious moral stands I had ever taken in my life.”

At the end of the war, Gustav’s morality led him to make another difficult choice: he turned himself in to the Allies and was taken as a prisoner of war.

Overcoming Through Love

After enduring the horrors of captivity, Agnes was finally liberated. She eventually decided to move to Långshyttan, Sweden, where she worked in a factory cafeteria.

“The job as a kitchen helper and waitress in Långshyttan was my first paid job, and it marked also the beginning of a new life for me,” she says. Little did she know that it would also mark the beginning of a new love: Agnes and Gustav were destined to meet in Långshyttan.

Gustav’s path to Sweden as a POW was a difficult and uncertain one. When he was released, Gustav recounts, “They unlocked my jail door. For me, the war was finally over. My first hour of freedom stunned me.” Due to Gustav’s Swedish citizenship, his sister had negotiated his exile to Sweden rather than a political trial in Norway, and his cousin, Helge Palm, arranged a job and apartment for Gustav upon his arrival in Långshyttan.

“I was 23 years old, had only a few clothes and no money, and felt completely ostracized from society,” he shares. “For me it was inconceivable that Germany could be behind the horror that I was hearing more and more about. But now it turned out to be true, and I had taken part in all this. I had served in the Waffen-SS in good faith, but no one now wanted to see it that way.”

But there was at least one person who noticed him: Agnes. “In early March,” she says, “I noticed a young man—so miserable, so lean, and so pale, almost green in his face—standing in the lunchroom queue. He had beautiful, sad, kind eyes.” When she noticed his seat empty one day, she traveled to his nearby apartment to bring him food.

And that was how it all began.

Gustav initially asked Agnes to the movies. “We began to meet more frequently. We each had little money, but neither of us really missed anything. Our long walks and talks took the place of what we did not have. Agnes meant more and more to me.”

Even when Gustav told Agnes about his past in the Waffen-SS, she listened to him with an open and forgiving heart. “Our relationship only got stronger,” Gustav says, “and soon there were ties between us that could no longer be broken so easily.”

“Gustav was 24 and I was 27, and we were truly in love,” Agnes recalls. “We needed each other. He was alone and I was alone, but together we had each other.”

Nothing could separate them—not even their war traumas. They were married on March 2, 1947.

Finding the Gospel Together

1950s, Borlänge, Sweden

Happy years passed by, and they each put their war-ridden pasts behind them. Still, Agnes and Gustav each yearned to find a fulfilling church to go to. They found it when a neighbor lodging two American Mormon missionaries loaned them a Book of Mormon and introduced the Palms to the elders.

The family studied the Book of Mormon and met with the missionaries. Agnes remembers, “Gustav did as it said in the book to do: he asked God in prayer with a sincere heart whether the book was true, and he got a convincing answer to his prayer.”

Ten months later, they were baptized in a small river. “It felt like being baptized in the Jordan River. A quiet peace prevailed, and I felt a great inner joy,” Agnes says.

Gustav and Agnes are now in their 90s, and through many years and humble circumstances, they have built up a large, devoted family that now exceeds more than 125 people. Their example is one that will forever be remembered—and not only by their family.

In 1995, President Thomas S. Monson visited Stockholm to divide the existing stakes. At a meeting with 1,500 Swedish Saints, President Monson told the little-shared story of Agnes, a Holocaust survivor, and her sweetheart Gustav, a Waffen-SS soldier. Finally, Gustav’s years of guarded silence about his past were broken.

And yet, never an unkind word has been spoken on the subject. Their fellow Saints know that their life together is a remarkable example of fortitude, forgiveness, and faithfulness to the Lord. Inscribed on the Palm family crest is the motto “Overcome through love.” And nothing could describe Agnes and Gustav’s legacy more aptly than that: love and faith can conquer all.

Read or listen to more of their amazing true story and journey of faith and forgiveness with the book and audiobook Surviving Hitler. This book tells even more about the horrors of their war experiences and the multiple miracles that saved their lives. Available at deseretbook.com.

Original Source:  Article by O. Håkan Palm. Content link: LDSLiving.com. 

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.

John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. IRI Photo.

In recent years, the Syrian city of Aleppo has been a staging ground of death, violence and horror. Civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and legions have been forced to flee this ancient city — contributing to a global refugee crisis.

Like countless others, Richard Morley has viewed the Aleppo tragedy from afar, lamenting the suffering that has come to define a city built centuries before the birth of Christ.

A lifelong Church member from Price, Utah, Brother Morley has a family tie to Aleppo and its brief but meaningful Mormon history. The city was once home to a small but faithful group of Latter-day Saints and missionaries. In fact, the remains of at least two missionaries are buried there. Their graves were dedicated by a latter-day apostle and became lasting reminders of the sacrifice sometimes exacted in service to the Lord and His gospel.

Elder Jacob Spori from Logan, Utah, opened the Turkish Mission in 1884, signaling the beginning of missionary work in the Middle East. According to James A. Toronto’s publication “The Church in the Middle East,” branches of the Church — consisting primarily of Armenian and European converts — were eventually established in several cities in the vast region, including Aleppo.

Over the next several decades, dozens of elders and one sister missionary would serve in the nations of Turkey and Syria.

Counted among those missionaries was Brother Morley’s maternal grandfather, John T. Woodbury, who labored in Turkey and Syria from 1904 to 1909. At the conclusion of his mission, Elder Woodbury received permission from the First Presidency to marry and return to his Utah home with a Mormon Armenian woman (Brother Morley’s grandmother) named Nimzar Gagosian Woodbury.

Missionary work in the Middle East around the turn of the 20th century was difficult. Political and religious turmoil often undermined the work. Conversions were scarce, the members risked persecution and, sadly, several missionaries lost their lives while fulfilling their callings.

Five missionaries succumbed to natural ailments such as small pox and pneumonia, according to Brother Morley, who has spent years researching the experiences of his grandfather and his fellow missionaries in Turkey and Syria.

The mission, wrote Brother Morley, “was finally closed in 1928, when [mission president] Joseph Booth died from exhaustion and pneumonia. His remains were laid to rest in Aleppo, Syria, at a cemetery near mission headquarters and near the grave of young Elder Emil J. Huber, who died there on May 16, 1908.”

Five years later, on June 18, 1933, Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited Aleppo and dedicated the graves of President Booth and Elder Huber.

The apostle would record his recollections of that sacred day:

“[President Booth’s] grave is at the very upper edge of the cemetery. It is visible from all parts of the cemetery itself and from the highway below. We held two meetings with the Aleppo saints; one in the early forenoon and another in the late afternoon. At the close of the afternoon meeting, members and friends present walked to the cemetery to gather around the grave. There a brief outdoor meeting was held.”

In his writings, Elder Widtsoe noted that he addressed the small group before dedicating the graves and a monument that had been placed at the cemetery. The service closed with a prayer and singing of “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.”

“The exercises ended just as the sun set behind the western hills,” wrote Elder Widtsoe. “A few clouds floated in the blue sky and made slashes of color in the sunset. It was a peaceful happy hour.”

That placid Aleppo afternoon stands in stark contrast to the destruction of the day. Missionaries no longer serve in the city and Brother Morley hopes that the final resting places of President Booth and Elder Huber have not been disturbed.

In a recently published family history, he wrote: “I hope that the God of heaven has miraculously preserved the otherwise barely known good works of the Lord’s servants in the [Turkish] Mission.”

Original Source:  Article by John Swensen. Content link: DeseretNews.com. 

Megan Finley

In between writing short stories she’ll never finish and marathoning Marvel movies, Megan Finley is often found missing the loves of her life, her two cats Leia and Loki. Her passion for “geek culture” extends into her passion for academics, as she is an optimistic MA student with plans to be the next Professor X (with hair). Her life’s dream is a simple one—to drink a hot chocolate in every Disney park in the world.