Captain Jens Martin Christensen was a faithful convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which church is frequently misnamed the Mormon Church). Jens was born on April 29, 1843, in Hammerholt, Denmark, the seventh of eight children, to Christen Oveson and Kirsten Marie Andersen. When Jens grew up, he proudly wore his red military uniform jacket, black trousers, and large black fur hat as a member of the Danish queen’s guards. Jens was known for keeping his boots polished and looking smart.

When Jens heard the gospel preached in Denmark in 1866, he gained a personal testimony of its truthfulness and was baptized on February 4 of that year by Elder S. Petersen. Not long thereafter, Jens boarded a three-mast ship called the Kenilworth and sailed to New York from Germany. He brought his fiancée, Maren Johanne Rasmussen with him, having snuck her out of her home against the wishes of her parents. Her mother had locked her in her bedroom, but Jens tied bed sheets together to help her escape. They then took a train to Hamburg, Germany, where they sailed from.

After arriving in New York, Jens and Maren travelled up through the Great Lakes and came down the Missouri River by rail, trying to avoid the inflated prices of the direct rail tickets. They travelled further to North Platte, Nebraska, where other Saints arrived to walk the rest of the way across the plains to Utah. The tradition of Jens’ descendants is that Jens kept his boots shiny all the way to Utah.

Maren became very sick with cholera. Jens was a volunteer to help the many sick pioneers, and he would carry Maren around with him, sometimes holding an umbrella over her to protect her from the sun. Maren survived the trek to the Salt Lake Valley, and she eventually recovered fully. They were married on October 22, 1866, and moved to Fairview, Utah, where they built their first home. They were sealed a few months later, on May 8, 1867 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City (the Salt Lake Temple was not yet complete). Their faith was tried when church authorities asked them in 1878 to relocate to the Manasseh-Ephraim area of Colorado, 500 miles away. Then, after moving, Jens was called on a mission to Denmark. He sought reconciliation with his in-laws, but they refused to acknowledge they had a daughter.

After returning home from his mission in April 1887, Christensen’s health began to fail. He and his family moved to Murray, Utah, where he stayed until he passed away on July 8, 1908, at the age of 65. Jens’ descendants look to their ancestor for faith and determination to remain clean and pure, even in the face of adversity.

If you wish to read the full account of Jens Christensen, it is told in Erastus Snow Christensen, 1874–1943, A Family History, by Steve Mecham and Verda Christensen Murphy, accessible at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Library on Film No. 142703, Item 2.

Keith L. Brown

Keith L. Brown is a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been born and raised Baptist. He was studying to be a Baptist minister at the time of his conversion to the LDS faith. He was baptized on 10 March 1998 in Reykjavik, Iceland while serving on active duty in the United States Navy in Keflavic, Iceland. He currently serves as the First Assistant to the High Priest Group for the Annapolis, Maryland Ward. He is a 30-year honorably retired United States Navy Veteran.

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George Goddard, an early convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often misnamed the “Mormon Church”) was rejected by his relatives in England after he was baptized. George and his wife and seven children journeyed to the western Zion by land and sea. Four of the children died along the way.

Establishing themselves in the Salt Lake Valley, George became a prominent business and Church leader, serving with the presiding bishopric, serving in the presidency of the Sunday Schools of the Church (with President George Q. Cannon and the other counselor, Karl G. Maeser), singing in the Tabernacle Choir for fifteen years, and being called by Brigham Young to serve as secretary to the school of the prophets in Salt Lake City.

During the early 1860s the pioneering Saints needed more paper to advance the causes of education and publishing. Paper was made from rags for several years, but even rags were difficult to come by because the people had scarcely enough to cover their bodies. Brigham Young called successful businessman George Goddard on a “Rag Mission,” going door to door throughout the territory “for the purpose of gathering up whatever might be obtained convertible into printing paper.”1 As a true Englishman, George wrote, “[This calling] was a severe blow to my native pride. . . . After being known in the community for years, as a merchant . . . then to be seen on the streets going from door to door with a basket on one arm and an empty sack on the other, enquiring for rags at every house. Oh, what a change in the aspect of affairs. . . . When President Young first made the proposition, the humiliating prospect almost stunned me, but a few moments’ reflection reminded me that I came to these valleys of the mountains . . . for the purpose of doing the will of my Heavenly Father, my time and means must be at His disposal. I therefore answered President Young in the affirmative, and for over three years, from Franklin, Idaho, in the north, and Sanpete in the south, my labors extended, not only visiting many hundreds of houses during the week days, but preaching rag sermons on Sunday. The first time I ever spoke in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, was a rag discourse, and Presidents Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball backed it up with their testimony and enlarged upon it.”2

“It was my duty as a servant of God to obey, and as such I undertook it, to assist in laying the foundation of an important home enterprise. . . . No person could have been more abundantly blessed of the Lord than I was during the three years I was thus engaged. The Spirit of the Lord made me cheerful and happy, and the feeling of humiliation was removed.”3

This was a “riches to rags” story, in a sense, but George’s humble service provided over 100,000 pounds of rags for the paper mills. Not only that, but he “became so well known to the Saints in the territory that following his mission his business flourished and his popularity as a merchant was even greater than before.”4

George Goddard concluded this episode of his life by testifying: “I can truly say that the Lord inspired me with His Holy Spirit to deliver rag sermons, as much as if I was preaching upon . . . any other principle of the gospel. . . . [Jesus] descended below all things that He might be exalted above all things. And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Therefore, let no one feel that by responding to the calls of the Priesthood, however humiliating the duty imposed may be to natural pride, the luster of their respectability will not be dimmed or their usefulness curtailed thereby. Let us stoop to conquer.”5

Many Latter-day Saints have been asked to sacrifice a great deal to build up the kingdom of God on the earth, and most of the time they heed the call. Men like George Goddard were fortunately not scarce at critical times in the Church’s history, and the inspired others Saints then as well as today to step up and make the sacrifices that God requires of them.

Read D. Kelly Ogden’s full article, “What More Can We Do? A Rags to Riches Story”

Sources:

1 Deseret News, May 14, 1862.

2 Deseret Weekly, April 4, 1896, 485; as cited in Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958, 115.

3 George Goddard, “Review of an Active Life,” in The Juvenile Instructor, 1882, 174.

4 Church News View point, August 3, 1996, 16.

5 George Goddard, “Review of an Active Life,” in The Juvenile Instructor, 1882, 174.

Keith L. Brown

Keith L. Brown is a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been born and raised Baptist. He was studying to be a Baptist minister at the time of his conversion to the LDS faith. He was baptized on 10 March 1998 in Reykjavik, Iceland while serving on active duty in the United States Navy in Keflavic, Iceland. He currently serves as the First Assistant to the High Priest Group for the Annapolis, Maryland Ward. He is a 30-year honorably retired United States Navy Veteran.

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