One of Joseph Smith’s friends described him as, “always cheerful and happy.” But anyone that has studied Joseph’s life understands the crippling (almost literally) trials he suffered. Six of his children died. He was forced to defend himself in about 48 different criminal court cases (according to Brigham Young). He was attacked, tarred and feathered, and unjustly imprisoned. Yet, he’s described as “always cheerful and happy.” Surely Joseph understood the importance of finding happiness despite unending opposition.
And so the choice is truly ours. We can choose to be unhappy with the chaos in our lives, or we can deal with it as best we can, and find happiness amidst the chaos nonetheless.
Back in Nauvoo, Joseph rode home to see Emma and their children again. He said another goodbye and asked Emma if she would come with him, but she knew she had to stay with the children. Joseph appeared solemn and thoughtful, grimly certain of his fate. Before he left, Emma asked him for a blessing. With no time to spare, Joseph asked her to write the blessing she desired and promised he would sign it when he returned.
In the blessing she penned, Emma asked for wisdom from Heavenly Father and the gift of discernment. “I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself,” she wrote. “I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God.”
She asked for wisdom to raise her children, including the baby she expected in November, and expressed hope in her eternal marriage covenant. “I desire with all my heart to honor and respect my husband,” she wrote, “ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him retain the place which God has given me by his side.”
Finally, Emma prayed for humility and hoped to rejoice in the blessings God prepared for the obedient. “I desire that whatever may be my lot through life,” she wrote, “I may be enabled to acknowledge the hand of God in all things.”
A SHORT SYNOPSIS OF MY MOTHER’S LIFE Written By her daughter Ellen Forward Wheat.
This first picture are of my Great Grandma Naomi Forward Thomas with Ellen Forward Wheat, my Grandma Naomi Forward Thomas’s younger sister (The beautiful Tall one) and the twins Alice and Mabel. And then The First to commit to the Gospel Great Great Grandma and Grandpa Pitman.
Now my Great Aunt Ellen Forward Wheat’s account of her Mother’s life – My mother was born on September 7, 1865, at Blaenavon, So. Wales, and was named Naomi Biggs. Her parents, Thomas Biggs and Ellen Pitman (See the Pittmans above) joined the LDS Church when she was a baby. She was not baptized when she was a child because there were no missionaries there at that time. So she grew to womanhood without knowing much about the Gospel and its teachings. However, she married and became the mother of eleven children—ten of whom grew to adulthood.
This is Great Grandpa Forward Naomi Forward’s husband.
My earliest recollection of the LDS Church was as a child. Being curious to know what mysterious things were put away in drawers, I came across a bundle of little magazines, all tied up, and of course I opened them. I found them to be copies of the “Latter-day-Saints Millennial Star”, published by the European Mission. They contained articles of interest about the Church and also published many of its teachings. Mother had read them all many times, I’m sure, and said that after reading them she had no desire to join any other church. I remember her saying that on one occasion she came into her home to find someone had left a Gospel Tract on the table and it made her feel very happy to find that someone was somewhere teaching those same doctrines.
In about the year 1908 or 1909, we moved from Cwmavon to a place called Varteg, where my maternal grandmother lived. There we came in contact with the missionaries, and there mother heard that same message.
To her it was the Gospel in its fullness as taught by Jesus Christ. Her mother had told her the story of the Prophet Joseph, which she had always believed, and to hear it again seemed the fulfillment of her desires.
During this period the Church was going through one of its greatest ordeals of persecution and to be a Mormon or to be in any way connected with them meant to lose your friends and also on many occasions the respect and love of one’s family. Thus it was with mother’s family—her husband was very prejudiced—her sons took no heed of her teachings, but some of the seeds of the Gospel message fell on fruitful ground and as a result one of her daughters, [also named Naomi](This is my Grandma and Grandpa Thomas – the first of the first of the next group), joined the Church as she was at an age where she might choose for herself. So thus the first member of mother’s family of children became a “Mormon”, a desire that had long been in mother’s heart but could not be granted.
She continued to attend the cottage meetings, which were held in many scattered places, sometimes walking ten or twelve miles to get there. She knew by this time that the law of tithing was a law of God, and faithfully paid an honest tithing and fast offering. She had a fervent testimony of the Word of Wisdom and lived it to the letter.
Through diligent work and earnest prayer father at last gave his permission for mother to be baptized, which was a day of rejoicing. In the meantime my oldest sister, [Naomi], and her husband had joined the Church so they went with us twelve miles away to Newport and there in the canal, mother and I went down into the waters of baptism. Elder H. R. Thomas, a missionary of Wales, Sanpete Co, Utah, baptized us. This was in 1912, and in 1914, World War 1, broke out.
Father did not feel any better toward the Church, so life was not easy and many trials and persecutions followed. This has been the lot of many converts to this Church.
In 1916, [Naomi], the daughter who had first joined the Church came to Utah, my brothers were called to war and it was an anxious time for all. We still had a few missionaries from Zion and several of the local saints were called to labor as missionaries.
Mother was among them and she labored faithfully in that capacity until after the war when more missionaries came from Utah.
In 1916, a Relief Society was organized and mother was made president, a position she held for nineteen years. Her labors in the Relief Society were many and varied as all those who work in Relief Society know. What a contrast to the few sisters who met in humble cottage meetings to pursue their labors to the wonderful gatherings now held in the Tabernacle, in Varteg and elsewhere. Yet from humble beginnings much good has been accomplished.
During these years my father seemed to grow more tolerant toward the Church. Mother tried to teach him the gospel but he would not attend many meetings. She would read aloud to him from the scriptures and the Book of Mormon and other Church works. He finally became quite friendly to the missionaries and allowed them to visit his home where they were housed and fed and made comfortable. However, he passed away in 1933, without ever being baptized.
In 1919, one year after the armistice was signed, I left home to come to Zion [see the autobiography of Ellen Forward Wheat for details]. I lived here for sixteen years and during that time two more of my sisters came to this country, one in 1924 and one in 1928. They were mother’s youngest children, twin girls, [Alice and Mable] – The ones in the picture above.
In 1935, the opportunity came for me to again visit my homeland. I took my three-year-old daughter, [Barbara], and arrived there safely after a lovely trip across the Atlantic Ocean. We visited family and friends for three months and then made preparations to return home, bringing mother with us.
They were busy and exciting days. Finally we were ready to sail on September 7, which was mother’s 70th birthday. We will never forget the trip home, as it was wonderful! [Naomi, Ellen, and Barbara set sail on September 7, 1935 on the ship M.V. Britannic departing from Southampton and arriving in New York.]
When we reached New York, my husband, [James Levi Wheat] who had been waiting patiently for five days, met the ship at the dock. We then started the trip, by car, back to Utah. We drove up the Hudson River to Albany, where we stayed the night, then on to Palmyra and the hill Cumorah. We visited the Sacred Grove and experienced the thrill of standing on the Hill Cumorah and our thoughts went back to the story of the Prophet Joseph again. It was one of the happiest moments of mother’s life. Then on to Niagara to see the falls, all of which was very thrilling to us.
We finally reached Salt Lake City—a dream fulfilled for thousands of Saints. For us and for mother especially, it was one of the many great blessings that come to the faithful.
A few months after arriving home mother went to the Temple in Salt Lake City for her own endowments. We have had father baptized and had all his work done and father and mother have been sealed together with all available children. I know mother is happiest when she can go to the Temple and perform the work for those who have gone before. This is another of the many great blessings the Gospel has brought us. I know she is thankful for all these things and I can see the hand of the Lord guiding her destiny all through her life.
This week she will fulfill another long-held desire and along with those of her children who reside here will become a citizen of this great country. We believe in being loyal and true to the country we have adopted, and may we all live to see peace restored.
I would like to pay tribute to my mother and thank her for all her teachings, not only by precept but by example and I pray the Lord will continue to bless her with health, peace of mind, and that I may always be as steadfast and faithful to the Gospel as she has always been.
*Footnote: This was written in 1945 (Two years before we Thomas’s started to come – April 1947), the end of the Second World War. At that time mother was about 80 years of age, and had enjoyed good health and was able to go to the Temple often. At about 85 her health began to fail and for the next few years she became unable to do the things she loved. In the summer of 1954 she suffered a stroke and was bedridden until November 2, 1954 (I remember her living in Grandpa and Grandma Thomas’s house, upstairs – we had to be quiet or go outside), when she passed away at my home at the age of 89.
Great Grandma Forward with her daughters- in the back 2nd in is my Great Aunt Ellen Forward Wheat (The Author of this article); 4th over in the back is my Grandma Naomi Forward Thomas; 2nd row on either side are the twins, from the first picture above Alice and Mabel with Ruth in the center my Great Aunts too. Then sitting in front in her regal place is Great Grandmother Naomi Biggs Forward. Side note the two little girls are Prdwynn and Ann, my cousins – Uncle Harold and Aunt Effie’s girls. And I think they are watching my brothers Chris and Richard teasing a cat.
When I look at mini me, I see a young man who was terrified all the time, blind as a bat (I’d be in the 2nd grade before it was discovered I needed glasses), but in spite of the tremblings he heeded the promptings of his internal call to ramble to the edge and engage the dreams in his heart and he did fly. As I get older I find glimmers of the dents in my personal evolution, hiccups in my gallumps of becoming me. I want to remember both those I recall with clarity and those that haunt the edge of my ability to recall.
So, I think I was always afraid – afraid of any and all imagined possibilities. But what thrills me the most is my terror didn’t stop me – night sweats, bullies, the dark and chronic shyness and constant stress – I kept listening to my pre-mortal “soul voice” and line upon line, precept upon precept I step out. I found me, a me I still like.
I don’t think I was born with fear, I was taught, I think through my Mom’s theory of child care. I had premonitions that there was something wrong with my mind’s instinctual reaction to the dark and unknown aspects of life. But it wasn’t until September 23rd 1965 that I began the revelation as to why.
I was getting married to the most beautiful woman in the world – Paula Jean Larson. We had been in love for at least three years and now in spite of an uphill drag to the altar – I must add that none of the resistance came from the two of us, Paula and I were about to trigger the next stage of our pre-mortal promise – we were making our commitment to each other eternal in the Salt Lake Temple. I don’t know why, but our marriage was being sealed by a member of the Temple Presidency. To my surprise I knew the man and he knew my family.
President Selvoy J.Boyer.
My folks knew him as the British Mission President, from there Post war days in England and I had met him when he Presided as the President of the London Temple while I was on my mission in The Central British Mission. When I visited the London Temple he and I had a memorable meeting and he didn’t know he knew me or I him. He was now a temple sealer in the temple. Brother Boyer was an exceptional servant of the Lord.
I think in an effort to celebrate the quality and guilelessness of my mother’s faith, he told a story. He said he had been impressed by how often he saw my mother serving as a genealogy name gatherer in London and he felt prompted to ask her where her children were, this was probably in 1946 or 1947 before we left England and came to America. My Mom told him she had left Richard and me in the hands of the Lord or in other words alone and unattended in her home (If I have it right her babies were 120 miles away). Elder Boyer said he was alarmed and send her home immediately. Even though President Boyer was trying to celebrate the goodness of Mom, she was offended and embarrassed, but Aunts and other relative have validating the truth of my mom’s assumption that God would keep her babies safe and that Guardian Angels would watch over us, but my phantom memories tell me they didn’t change our diapers and if and when Mom got back our diaper were fully loaded. As I had reflected on my mental mirages (Fragments of Memories)- I Sense me standing in my crib, diaper soaked, scream crying and worried about my little brother Richard – After Brother Boyer’s story these memory made sense.
Another memory fragment is about me wandering, yeah rambling. I was lost. I don’t know where, but Somewhere in Holladay, Utah (The spelling is right, the city is named after a pioneer from Alabama name John Holladay). I think we were living in a transitional place. I remember it as a chicken coop with dirt floors. We were all in bunk beds and mom gave us baby bottles filled with warm Postum. I can remember trying to stay of the dirt floor. I don’t think we were there long, but I think I wandered off from there. I was in a recently harvested field. The stubby ends of grain stalks were everywhere sticking into my ankles and the field was endless with a bob-wire fence running down the right hand side.
This isn’t the Coop, but it’s about right
This isn’t the fence, but it reflects my memory.
I have no idea how I got there, but I was about four and I probably just wandered off. I had a strong impression, maybe it was a voice that told me to walk towards the fence. With the faith of a child I listen and walked to the fence and saw down below on a old dirt road a group of men gathered. They looked up and pointed, “There he is.” I can remember being gathered up in someones arms and there being a lot of excitement about me being found. I wasn’t scared, just confused. I was on one of my early “Walkabouts.” I didn’t feel lost, the sun was out and I wasn’t afraid.
Another time I was riding in the back seat, I think it might have been my Uncle Karl Wiscombe’s car, when I just reached out and pull the handle of the door and the door flew open. I hung onto the handle and I could remember seeing the ground speeding below me, 2/3rd of me was hanging in space and the balance with my feet was clutching onto the floor of the car. My cousin Jean Wiscombe grabbed me and pull me back in. Again confused. My cousin Jean confirmed that this had happened.
Another time I can remember falling of a tree that was laying in the water I slipped off the tree into water that was deep, cold and over my head, but again hands grabbed me and pulled me back safe onto the log.
Again, this isn’t the log, but it was kinda like this.
When we first got to America I remember sleeping in Aunt Glad’s (Gladys) house and watching and hearing the trains rush past in front of her house. I was sleeping on the second floor and had a great view. I loved listening to the clickadeeclack of the train and its whistle blowing as it headed south. I still love that sound. These are my four year old’s memories.
I still love trains. My dad would draw trains for me to keep me quiet in Church.
I have lots of memories of my Holladay, Utah days. This is Chris, Me, my cousin Joy, Richard (4 or 5), my best cousins Bill and Marie hiding behind Bill. This is, I think, the car my mom crashed (more about that later).
Now keep in mind that the mini me you see in this picture above had terrible eye sight, but I remember seeing a UFO (An Unidentified Flying Object). Just imagine this little boy on the tricycle looking up into the sky and seeing a ball of fire roaring, it made a roaring sound, just above me in the sky. It appeared to be the size of a volleyball but I watched it flashed across the horizon and disappeared. The memory is vivid – Even now. Now this wasn’t at twilight it was in the middle of the afternoon, but I can’t remember anyone else saying they had seen it too, but I didn’t ask, I was very shy and I didn’t want to appear foolish.
As suggested I remember my folks having a car accident. I assume it was in the car pictured above. My dad was teaching my mom to drive and she hit a telephone pole. The electric power line was ripped from the pole and fell across the car. My dad knew they were in trouble, in real danger of being electrocuted and he jumped out and pulled the torn wire off the car. I think he was burned really badly because his hands were wrapped up in bandages like boxing gloves. I sensed he felt real foolish about it. When I asked he claimed to have no memory of it, the boxing glove bandages.
My dad had a motorcycle in England and a car, but I can remember him getting around on a bike in America before we got the car and that brings up one of my favorite stories.
This isn’t my dad or my family, but dad was just as creative in getting a family of five from place to place.
We loved the movies, or as they say in England “The Pictures.” I only remember this escapade happening once, but dad took all of us to the movies, at the Holladay Theater – on his bike.
Olympus Theatre, Salt Lake City, UT
This is the Theater at 4850 South Holladay Blvd. It was called the Holladay Theater in the 1940‘s. Dad brought us in one or two at a time.
I loved the Holladay Theater. I used to pass it on my way back from school. I loved looking at the movie poster in the poster box on the right in the picture above. This is a poster from the right time period and of my boyhood hero. I used to see my reflection in the glass and try to wrinkle my forehead just like Roy, I couldn’t. My love of movies started very early.
I’ll talk more about Roy Rogers later. But back to the story about how dad got us to the theater. He would ride back and forth with his passengers on the cross bar or handlebars of the bike. He brought me in first. It was early evening and still light and he told me to wait to the side in front of the theater. I waited nervously, for it seemed a long time and then dad arrived with Chris on the crossbar and Richard on the handlebars. They joined me and the three of just huddle down below the front sidewalk. I wasn’t as nervous now because I wasn’t alone and we waited pensively together. And then it happened we could hear our mom wailing from at least three blocks away. Kind of like a bunch of coyotes howling at the moon, but with a lot of terror in it. Everyone could hear her, I wonder If they thought it was a fire truck. We three just tried to hide in our bunker below the sidewalk.
Finally the good ship Violet pull into port and the siren stopped.
Dad staggered up to the ticket window bought our tickets and signaled to us and we buried ourselves in the entering crowd. I remember the movie as being black and white and scary, but even more than that I remember listening to my dad wheeze along with soundtrack. I don’t remember a bike ride home in the dark, maybe one of the three Nephites showed up with a truck and loaded us up and took us home in one trip. Therefore, I think getting a car was a big deal. By the way, my dad’s shop – The Tick Tock Shop would be moved into the foyer of this very theater. The rest of the theater, the seats and screen would become a garage.
We lived with my Grandpa and Grandma Grundy for a while (As noted a long time family tradition). I think we lived in the basement. I remember several other things that happened at the Grundy house in Holladay. The first was a sledding accident. As I have mentioned I had really bad eyesight and one day I decided to go sleigh riding. There were no sledding friendly hills around the Grundy house, everything was steep and full of trees, but that didn’t stop me. I grabbed my sled and looked for the closest down hill I could find and over the top I went. I rocketed down the hill pell-mell and then I saw an old bob wire fence peeking just above the snow. I crank my sled hard to the left, but too late and the bob-wire clawed across the right side of my face. And that’s why I have scar right in the center of my right cheek.
That summer, I think, There was a the weed fire (There were fire trucks), but I believe that’s my brother Richard’s story to tell. I prefer to go to a more magical moment for me. I don’t know how I found it, but on one of my childhood “explores”(I think I was alone – another “walkabout”) I found, in the middle of summer, a path that led to the river bottom and I’d follow it down to a huge tree shadowed pond – It was magical. Frogs, birds, aquatic life of all kinds and absolute serenity. The sunlight play blissfully through the canopy of golden green. I knew this was a brush with heaven and I mentally sipped it into my soul. I sat there alone for a long time. I think I knew I would never find it again, but I was wrong, I would and did about ten years later (Look for this story when I run the Colorado River with my Dad, Richard and Chris).
This isn’t the place, but it is close to how I remember it.
Another story that resulted in scars needs to be told in this time frame. I have no idea as to how and why we got into this horrific situation, but we were living with Grandpa and Grandma Grundy at the time and my Mom, who was quick to jump at the opportunity to get out of the house, left Grandma Grundy in charge of us. I was five or six at the time and I guess by default I became the alpha male. Richard, maybe four, Chris about three and I wander into the back country behind and to the north of the house. We really wandered afar off for our age and we climbed up the hill to the top into farmer Gygi farm.
Farmer Gygi had an expensive game dog, maybe a Labrador, which had just had a litter of puppies. The dogs were too young to be touched or handled with out making their mommy mad. But my little brother Chris saw only baby dogs and he went for them.
The dogs were in a high fence area, but it had been left open. Chris was inside in a flash and reached for the puppies – I didn’t see it, but I heard it – savage!
All of a sudden one of the farmer’s sons showed up, rushed into the dog cage and grabbed Chris. He had been badly bitten by the dog, but he was alive. I guess we some how got to the doctor’s and Chris was patched up, but he would have a scar on his lip for the rest of his life. I always felt guilty about what happened.
Some how my dad and mom got us into our own home in Holladay Utah proper. For a kid with an active imagination it was amazing. Dad dubbed it “The Mansion,” but I remember it more like this picture. The homestead felt like it had been abandoned for awhile, but it had electricity and real floors. I liked it. And the backyard felt like a jungle. Grape vines covered everything It was shaded with green all the time. Old fruit trees were embraced by years of vines.
It felt like I was in a jungle
To the left of the house there was a huge field of wheat, like this.
It wasn’t this big, but it felt like it.
I remember hiking to school from “The Mansion.” From home to school seem like a forever walk and I was easily distracted. One of my favorite diversions was hidden garden that was right off Holladay Boulevard. I could peek through the fence and see it from the sidewalk. There was nothing for me at school and for a few minutes I could indulge my Celtic “Fairy People” nature and absolve myself into the water and green Eventually I meander through “downtown” Holladay to my Elementary School.
This isn’t the pond, it is suggestive of the seclusion and magic of it. There was an inclosed pond with a bridge built across it.
I would continue my forced march to school right passed the Holladay Theater, towards 4800 South and Holladay Blvd., cross the the intersection and then makes slight turn to the right and then up a bit of a hill – 2300 East.
Right down Holladay Blvd. through this intersection to my School
Today’s Holladay City Hall is in my Old School.
I would amble along until I stumble through the door and find my class. I have no memory of ever being taken to school and I’m afraid school had no appeal for me. I felt myself the alien I was I was still a little English kid who spoke with a “Brumee” twang (I sounded like Birmingham – all Blokes sounded of their cities be they Cockney or Liverpudean, Liverpool – think Beatles). But school always found me, I guess someone would “rat” me out to my mother and I find myself awash in words like “Disappointing,” “Daydreaming” “under achieving” but I had a secret – as I told you, I couldn’t see – hear yes, but I couldn’t see what they were talking about. Kindergarden, First and Second Grade washed before me as a blur before anyone realized – I needed glasses.
I think I tried, I wanted to be good, but I wasn’t from Planet America.
If one thing sticks out from this and much of first 15 years of my life – it was an overwhelming sense of being all alone. I will grant you, I was not out going, but I don’t remember any friends that I played with, just my brothers and my cousins – we few, we lonely few – foreigners.
Me, my first glasses and my first view of the world clearly.
From birth to the back end of 2nd Grade I was visually challenged. This picture is me and my Beginnings of seeing the world Clearly, if that is possible. Maybe because of the combination of being somewhat blind and and a foreigner I have spent a significant part of my life playing catch up – learning to read in my late teens, finding my K – 12 Education a transitional nightmare and feeling, for the most part, I was coming up short – wanting.
In horse racing there are riders that win, place and then the “also Rans” – they participated, raced, were there, but for the record book they’re only insignificance was they “filled out the field.” I have often felt I Ran insignificantly. In my dotage, now, I wonder…..
.I have been privileged to live a rich and in many ways a abundant life. I have kept the best of company, seen miraculous things and have worn the label of teacher, guide and mentor. But the quality of my peers, my colleagues have been so rich, that I believe I qualify as an “Also Ran”
My friends have been the best teachers in the Church; My bosses have grown into Apostles and Seventies; I have worked with some of the best professional writers and speakers produced by the BYU speaking circuit and true I was there, I Ran, I taught, I spoke, but, in my mind – so what?
And then there are my kids, each of them better than their Dad. I marvel at their talents, in righteousness, in service, in scholarship and wisdom. But hey, I am their Dad, but, then again, look at their Mom! Wow! But I won or maybe conned her heart.
She is mine – FOREVER
The Grand Guyboo in Venice, heading for the Rialto Bridge.
When the dilemma of comparison of ourself to other comes up we should alway remember the two great examples –
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
Ebenezer Scrooge
George was too harsh, had no idea how good he was and Ebenezer was in desperate need of an assisted look at himself.
My experience at 74 is my assessment of my life performance tends to reflections of regrets and fully visualized moments and days I disappointed myself – there are days when I really wish I could have a do over. I don’t live in regret, but wish I could go back and fix some stuff – am I a George or and Ebenezer?
Honest, I am grateful that God let me live my life as me. Me and my Camel Phil. Clarence the Angel won’t need to intercede in my life – I know I have lived fully and I am a blessed man.
But a couple of Thoreau’s quotes give me pause –
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
“Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
But Henry David Thoreau didn’t worked two full time jobs, marry and have six kids. He lived alone and thought deep thoughts, but he did make a better pencil. And being fair he died when he was 44. We all have our niche, our hand filled with some gift and Henry Dave handed his to Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Thoreau Pencils paid for his Harvard education, made him secure and covered the $28.50 for his year at Walden Pond
So divine discontent nags, but not for long. Life is still here and I am living it.
This is magnificent stain glass portrait of Saint Jude Thaddeus – Saint of Hopeless Causes is one of my favorite Traditional Saints. From what I understand there been as many as 10,000 Catholic Saints. Today, they note, that there are only 810 canonized saints – these are the Saints who have passed through the formal institutional process of canonization, but that number is in flux – Pope Francis as of now, has added 36, including Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. I’ll come back to the process of being canonized later, in a later article and we will check on the number again. Continue reading “Saint Stories 1 – Saint Jude, one of my favorite.”
In the Luke Chapter 15 Jesus is confronted by the Scribes and Pharisees about keeping company with sinners and the Savior’s response is to tell three stories about lost things. The meanings of these stories are enhanced if you can see and feel the stories the way Jesus’s audience would. The first story is about a lost sheep. Continue reading “The Art of Finding Lost Things”
Lehi as a father, sensed his allotted days were numbered and knowing the nature of the individual members of his family, he felt, he had to give it one last loving try. As a visionary man, a student of the scriptures and a true patriarch he both rejoiced and wept over his kids – he knows how it will play out once he returns to the dust. But, tenderly, he wants to encourage those who will hold on to the rod of truth faithfully and, just for loves sake, make one more loving appeal to those, who may have already let go. So Lehi talks about plans – one that works and one that ruins. These plans have two architects – the Loving Father of our spirit and other the grift of a self serving scam artist, Lucifer Son of the Morning.
Denying Satan Carl Bloch, 1850
Lehi, sums it up this way – “Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.” 1. Free choice that leads to the successful application of the Plan of Happiness – which results in joy is our job. But our Free choice can also barters off your serenity, your peace and leaves you with the encroaching coffin of misery. Continue reading “Teachers of Righteousness 1 – A Good Father or Mother? Lehi and Sariah – Adam and Eve”
My Mom, Violet Grundy Thomas deserves a fanfare, some entrance music. The Flight of the Valkyrie would work or maybe The William Tell Overture, but a Fight Song accentuated with drums and bagpipes – mom, being a former Scottish Missionary would like that. This rendition or musical number is a blend of Amazing Grace and Rachel Platten’s Fight Song. Mom would like Rachel’s words and attitude.
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I’m alright song
My power’s turned on
Starting right now I’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song
And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me Continue reading “US 9 – Violet The Original”
These words were said by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in reference to the Battle of Britain (July 10, 1940 – October 31, 1940) – England confrontation in the sky with Nazi Luftwaffe. England held off the Germans for two reasons – there were always brave British men to pilot the Hurricanes and Spitfires and common ordinary blokes and bloketes kept building the planes, Germany didn’t have the men or the ability to replace the planes. Continue reading “US 8 – Alvin the First’s young Life in Wales and his departure to Birmingham”
Now my Great Aunt Ellen Forward Wheat’s account of her Mother’s life – My mother was born on September 7, 1865, at Blaenavon, So. Wales, and was named Naomi Biggs. Her parents, Thomas Biggs and Ellen Pitman (See the Pittmans above) joined the LDS Church when she was a baby. She was not baptized when she was a child because there were no missionaries there at that time. So she grew to womanhood without knowing much about the Gospel and its teachings. However, she married and became the mother of eleven children—ten of whom grew to adulthood.
President Selvoy J.Boyer.
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
Ebenezer Scrooge
Lehi studying the Plates by Joseph Brickey
These words were said by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in reference to the Battle of Britain (J