followHIM - Doctrine & Covenants 125-128 Part 1 : Dr. Jennifer Reeder

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

Do you know Mary Ann Angell Young, Eliza R. Snow, Sarah Cleveland, Elizabeth Haven, Vienna Jacques, and Jane Neyman? They are some of the lesser-known heroes of the Restoration, and Dr. Jennifer Reeder joins Hank and John to share their stories, including their escape to Quincy, their building of Nauvoo, and the first baptisms for the dead.Shownotes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive ProducersDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Assistant Video EditorSpanish Transcripts: Ariel CuadraFrench Transcripts: Krystal RobertsPortuguese Transcripts: Igor Willians"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow him. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. I'm your host, Hank Smith. I'm here with my exceedingly glad co-host, John Bythorne. Oh, that sounds so Book of Mormon. I'm not just glad, I'm exceedingly glad. Wait till you get exceedingly glad beyond all... Glad beyond all measures. Beyond all measure.

All measure. We can't even put a measure on it. We can't even put a measure on it. It's a gap. Yeah. We want to remind everybody that you can find the podcast on social media. We have an Instagram page. We have a Facebook page. Our wonderful Jamie Nelson runs those.

So come on over and check out all the extras that we have there. And if you want to go to our website, followhim.co, followhim.co. And please take time to rate and review the podcast. That really helps us out. John, we've already had a bunch of fun before we hit the record button, so we better introduce our guests so we can get everybody caught up to speed. Tell us who's with us.

Oh, absolutely. We're delighted to have Jennifer Reeder here, and I am excited to show you this is where I'm getting her. Look at the word first and how it reflects there show you this is where i'm getting her look at the look at the word first and how it reflects there if you're watching on video today wah wah walk that that tells you deseret book loves this book yeah and to refer to emma as the first lady i love this the book is called first the life and faith of emma smith, by Dr. Reeder. Yes, and I was joking with Dr. Reeder because I was listening in the car and missed my exit. I was so involved. So let me

tell you about our guest today. Jennifer Reeder is a 19th century women's history specialist in the church history department. She has a PhD in American history from George Mason University. I love George Mason. I've quoted George Mason on this podcast. And an MA in history, documentary editing, and archival management from New York University, with a BA in humanities and English teaching from Brigham Young University. She's originally from Provo, Utah. She served a mission in Catania, Italy.

She has co-edited two books at the pulpit, 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women. That was with Kate Holbrook and The Witness of Women, First-Hand Experiences and Testimonies from the Restoration with Janice Johnson. And just I feel like having been listening to this, I feel like I know you a little bit already from your writing. So thank you for joining us on Follow Him today. Well, thank you. It's a privilege. We are very excited to have Dr. Reeder with us. Since we have an expert here with us, John, let's jump into this week's lesson. We are looking at sections 125 through 128 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Obviously, we're getting closer to

the end of our study this year, and that would mean the end of Jill's dismissed life. So, Dr. Reeder, take John and I and our listeners wherever you'd like to go to set us up for these sections. All right. So I'm going to start with the Saints leaving northern Missouri and fleeing east to the Mississippi River to take refuge for the winter of 1838 and 39. And they settled in various settlements along the riverbanks, both in Iowa territory and in the state of Illinois. They had abandoned all hopes of immediately building Zion in Missouri, and they were despondent, as I can imagine. I'm going to bring in as many women's voices as possible. So I want to share the words of Elizabeth Haven, who is 19 years old. She wrote to her cousin, another Elizabeth, on February 24th, 1839.

And I think this really gives us an idea of how the saints are feeling. She says, Oh, how Zion warns. Her sons have fallen in the streets by the cruel hand of the enemy, and her daughters weep in silence. It is impossible for my pen to tell you of our situation. Only those who feel it know. And then in her letter, she explains that the saint had been driven from the places of gathering out of the state of Missouri, from houses and lands in poverty, to seek for habitation where they can find them. And then she says this, and this I think is the saddest.

Because literally, By the river of Babylon, we can sit down. Yes, dear E, her cousin Elizabeth. We weep when we remember Zion. Oh, man. And that was a 19-year-old wrote that? Uh-huh. Wow.

Yeah. So it just depicts how sad and discouraged they are. The Lord had promised them that they would build Zion in Missouri, and they were all set to do that. And then it just didn't work out. Driven from county to county to county and finally out of the state. Right, right. So the largest number of saints settled in and around Quincy, Illinois, which is the true refuge. And the people of Quincy had first encountered the saints on their way to Missouri,

so between 1834 and 1838. And then in the winter of 1838 to 1839, there were thousands of displaced saints walking eastward across the frozen Mississippi River, and many of them settled temporarily in Quincy. So the population in Quincy grew from 800 in 1835 to 2,300 in 1840. So within five years, and that's all because of the saints. My goodness. It's a flood of people. It is a flood of people. An influx of refugees or immigrants or whatever you want to call them. I think this is really interesting.

The town of Quincy really prided themselves on being generous and benevolent. They had a Quincy Democratic Association. And they publicly denounced Missouri for their injustice toward the saints. Really? Wow. There might have been a little state competition going on there. We're nicer than you guys. Right. Yeah. And they pledged to assist the Latter-day Saint refugees. So the townspeople gathered donations and arranged housing and coordinated with local communities to provide

assistance for the impoverished saints. So it kind of reminds me of the news stories we've been seeing lately about how Latter-day Saints in Germany have worked to accommodate the Afghan refugees and how they're doing that all over. So I love that because I think it's just kind of a give and take. It's a, we've been in your position and we want to help you kind of thing. Although it's, you know, generations later. Yeah. But that's a beautiful idea. It is that you see yourself in people that you are now able to help.

And so you say, I was once in that place. Yeah. Beautiful idea. Yeah. So back to Elizabeth Haven, she said that God has opened their hearts to receive us. We are hungry and they feed us naked and they clothed us. The citizens have assisted beyond all calculation. And she also prayed that the heaven's blessings would rest upon them, which I think is really sweet. And I also, I love this, that Eliza R. Snow, who later would be called Zion's Poetess,

wrote a poem and printed it in the Quincy Whig, the newspaper. It's called To the Citizens of Quincy. And she's very grandiose in her language, but she was very sincere. She said, Ye sons and daughters of benevolence, whose hearts are tuned to notes of sympathy, It's actually a really long poem. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But at the end, ye noble, generous-hearted citizens of Quincy. So nothing but high praise and gratitude. Yeah, that sounds very scriptural. She's kind of speaking scripture there.

That is beautiful. That's how she writes. She's amazing. I think it's interesting that when Emma Smith brought her children across the frozen river, she also was carrying the Bible translation manuscripts under her skirt. And the river wasn't frozen enough that they could all just ride in the wagon. So she gets out of the wagon and walks.

And she's holding her baby and her toddler. You've probably seen the painting by Liz Lemon Swindle. And Julia and Joseph III are holding onto her skirts and she's got these manuscripts and she's walking across the river. And Joseph III grows up and talks about what a traumatic experience this was. So it's scary. Their dad's in jail, in the Liberty Jail, way back in Missouri. And they're just forging ahead. They end up staying in the home of Sarah Cleveland, who lives in Quincy. Her husband's not a member of the church.

But Sarah later becomes Emma's first counselor in the Relief Society, which I think is awesome. So at this point, the saints are determined to take advantage of the powers of government. They have been through so much in Missouri and even in Kirtland, and they really wanted to establish a city where they would be free to exercise their religious rights with the protection of legal authority, something that they had not been afforded before. So on December 16, 1840, the Illinois governor, Thomas Carlin, and the legislature of Illinois were eager to get the votes of Mormon refugees. This is just stacking up for them politically, right? And so they created an act to incorporate the city of Nauvoo, which granted very extensive legal powers to the citizens. And this actually will come into play a little bit later in the sections that we're talking about today. So this charter, the city charter, allowed the saints to organize a legislative body of their own to create laws within the city and to create the Nauvoo Legion, which was a subset of the state militia, and to establish a university, which they didn't quite get to.

And so they became an incorporated church in Illinoisinois with joseph smith as trustee and that's also important because it at the end of his life um it was a problem for emma so in this property's in his name right and it now belongs to her, but I'm sure Brigham Young- But it also belongs to the church. To the church, yeah. Right. Their finances were so inextricably linked together. And Emma was very concerned about providing for her family. And Brigham Young was very concerned about protecting the church.

And so there was a lot of tension that came up because of that. But we'll get to more about Emma on this charter. So also the Nauvoo period is a really interesting shift for Joseph. He receives less revelations during this period. There are 135 sections in our current Doctrine and Covenants that were written during Joseph's lifetime, but only nine of those come from five years in Nauvoo. So he kind of shifts from receiving revelation to public speaking, which is something that we don't have the records of previously, but we do.

He has scribes, they write down what he says. And so that's a little bit different in Nauvoo. And you'll notice in this section, two of these sections are actually letters that he writes to the people of Nauvoo. Okay. So that is an interesting shift for him because we've seen him writing, writing, writing, and now it's going to be sermons. Yeah. Which we don't have in the Doctrine and Covenants, unfortunately. You know, it's interesting. He does preach six sermons, particularly to the women in the Nauvoo Relief Society. And those are in the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes and recorded by Eliza Arsenault as the secretary. I was talking to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a scholar in Latter-day Saint women's history,

and she said she's convinced that the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes should be part of the Doctrine and Covenants, which I think would be so awesome, right? Yeah, that'd be fantastic. Can you get access to those on your- Yes, you can. They're in your Gospel Library app under, if you go under church history and restoration. So they're available there in, under the book, First 50 Years of Relief Society. So they're in there, but they're also on the Joseph Smith

Papers website. Okay. This is fantastic. I'm going to go read these. I didn't know they were there. And I would, I mean, here's six sermons from Joseph Smith we don't have, right? That they're not readily found right here in your Doctrine and Covenants. Yeah, they're good. They're good ones. Okay, let's talk a little bit about Section 125. So that was kind of a historical context. So beginning in 1839, as the Saints are leaving Missouri, many of them are settling on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River in and around Hancock County. But a smaller number is settling in scattered communities across the river in the Iowa Territory. So there's been a lot of questions about the settlement. And they're very eager that the people gather closely together,

that they're consolidated for safety reasons. And we saw what happened in Hans Mill in Missouri. That was a settlement that was very isolated from other settlements. And so they've learned their lesson. We need to gather closely together. So on May 24th, 1841, Joseph received revelation stating that all the approved stakes should be in Hancock County in Illinois and Lee County in Iowa, and all other stakes were discontinued. So they're reorganizing the boundaries. The river's just between them, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. So in August of 1841, a church conference was held in what Joseph named Zarahemla in this section.

And there were 326 members of the Zarahemla branch and then 80 members of the Nashville branch. I have to say, when I read Nashville, I was like, what? Tennessee? Grand Ole Opry? What? But there were a total of 750 members in Iowa stake. And the stake was formally organized on October 5th, 1839. So Nashville is Iowa? Yeah. How many did you say were in the branch in Nashville? 326 in the Zarahemla branch, and how many in Nashville? 80 in Nashville. So there were a total of 750 members in the Iowa stake. And that's a real short section, so there's not a lot more I can tell you about that. Jenny, I love this section 126 because of the idea of taking care of your family. Sometimes I feel like the

missionaries go off and leave their families in bad circumstances. And I think, wow, I'm glad we go now before we're married and stuff like this. But what can you tell us to lead into section 126? Wow. So, Brigham Young, you're absolutely right. And this is kind of a pattern that will continue into well into Utah, where women are left to fend for themselves. So while this is given specifically to Brigham Young, I think it's also to bring in as many women as we can. She's not listed there. But I love that this section recognizes the time that Brigham has spent away from home on several different missions. And the Lord has seen Brigham Young's labor and toil in his journeyings. So I, like John, love that he says to take a special care of your family from this time. And he calls it an offering. This was a, it acknowledges what a sacrifice it was. And it's a sacrifice for his wife, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Some of those stories, I think, you know, leave your sick wife and 47 children behind and go on a mission. Right. Wow. Well, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Marianne. Okay. So this is his so this is his second wife. His first wife, Miriam Works, died of consumption in 1832.

And after that, because Brigham Young was going on missions, as he was instructed by the Lord, the late Kimball took in his two daughters when Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young went on a mission. So let's shift to Marianne Angel. She is the daughter of this incredible woman, Phoebe Angel. I love Phoebe Angel. There's a talk by Phoebe Angel at the pulpit. So if you want to learn more about the Angel family, her dad wasn't a great guy. He was very abusive of the family. So no relation to Truman Angel or the... That's her brother.

Oh, okay. Architect of Salt Lake Temple? Uh-huh, and Nauvoo. Yeah. So she was baptized in 1832 when the Spirit bore witness to her the truth of the origin of the Book of Mormon. And she never doubted after that. So she went to Kirtland in the spring of 1833.

She became acquainted with Brigham Young and she felt drawn towards him when she heard him preach. And he was very impressed when he heard her testimony. So they got married in early 1834, and she took care of Brigham Young's children. She, like the typical frontier wife, she kept the house and labored faithfully for the interests of the young family, which meant taking care of things while he was on missions. Kind of like Emma. I think a lot of these ladies were really, thank goodness they were really converted and committed to do all of this on their own.

So he served missions about half of the time of their first five years of marriage. In fact, shortly after they got married, he was gone for four months with Zion's camp and he got home just in time for the birth of their first baby in October. But she raised Brigham Young's daughters, Elizabeth and Valate. They had that baby, Joseph, in 1834. And then they had twins, Mary Ann and Brigham.

How cute is that? In 1836. She's raising five kids at this point and her husband has been gone all over the place. Yeah. He's gone all the time. Right. So he comes back to Kirtland after one of his many missions. And there'd been a lot of dissension there with the Kirtland Safety Society and all the issues going on with the church. And so he had to go in hiding. So the mobbers terrorized Marianne and her children. And when she finally was able to join Brigham Young in Far West in the spring of 1838, he was shocked at her condition. And he said this to her, you look as if you were almost in your grave which i don't know if that was the

nicest thing i don't know maybe it's good to see you yeah right i don't know there's a couple other things he could have said wow so they didn't last in missouri for very long in fact it took them quite a while to leave Missouri and get to Illinois. It took them three months just because Brigham Young would go back and try to help other people that didn't have help. So they stayed in 11 different homes in those three months as they were traveling to Illinois. And let's just add this because of course, she was pregnant. Of course. Oh my word. So Brigham Young left on another mission to England. She had a 10 day old baby and six children and she was on the Iowa side,

right? So two months later, she ran out of food. So she would take her baby and go across the river to get potatoes and flour and then go back to her family in Iowa. She did sewing and laundry for other people. She was able, someone gave her a little plot of land in Nauvoo. So she would cross the river, plant a garden and come back. And then she'd, you know, home. Finally, I am not kidding you. She built a log cabin in Nauvoo with blankets hanging over the windows and doors. Marianne Young. Oh, my.

Marianne. That's right. Give her credit. Let's say her name. Give her the credit she deserves. So when Brigham Young returned to Nauvoo in July of 1841, he had been gone for 22 months and he built a red brick home that's still standing in Nauvoo, but it wasn't ready until May of 1843. So Joseph Smith comes to this very humble log cabin that Mary Ann Young built and gives this revelation to Brigham Young. And I love how it starts, dear and well beloved brother, Brigham Young. And it made me wonder, now is that Joseph talking? And then it's verily thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Brigham. So he's got some good introductory titles there. Yeah, he does. He's earned them, I think.

And Marianne as well. I was going to say, and Marianne. When I read verse two, I have seen your labor and toil. Oh, I'm going, yeah. Who's the one laboring and toiling? I built a cabin while you were gone, Brigham. Oh, my goodness. With six kids.

Yeah. So she was very well known for her benevolent and being benevolent and hospitable in the extreme conditions and administering generous advice and assistance to those in need. I'm really glad you talked about this because I think visitors to Nauvoo would see the Brigham Mowing home and say, wow, he was living pretty good here. That's a pretty nice house. It's a pretty nice house. But you hear this backstory and you think, okay, that's – and you got to give it to Marianne Young, don't you?

Absolutely. This mission, Jenny, that he leaves on that you just talked about, was that the hurrah for Israel story? Yes. He was very sick. He and Heber C. Kimball were very sick and they gave it everything so they were sick everybody at that and the home is sick can you tell us you mentioned before his first wife died of consumption that's tuberculosis is that right it's tuberculosis okay and then they deal with the problems of malaria in Nauvoo, of course.

Rivers and mosquitoes and, you know. Right. Swampy land. Yeah, swamps. That British mission that they go on, I mean, this is a huge. We don't have to dive into this, but isn't this a huge strength to the church over the next? Absolutely. In a lot of different ways. I mean, this provided leadership for the

men that were serving missions, but then also the influx of immigrants from Britain became like a huge part of the church. I think that when they do that British pageant in Nauvoo, it kind of tells that story of how important that particular mission to the British Isles was. And was it Charles Dickens, the statement about the pick and flower of England, that the converts to the church were? Right. Yeah. What was he trying to say, of a high class nature or just not of no class?

They were the pick and flower. Well, and it's interesting because so many of them too were such poor people that had worked so hard in factories in the industrial revolution in England, mills and all of that. But they were hard workers and they were anxious not only to build Zion and be with the saints, but also for the American dream of being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of their lives that they could never have had those opportunities in England. As I read this, I kind of chuckled that maybe Brigham and Marianne thought, oh, good, we're finally we can finally be done here. Relax. We've done our church service now. Brigham Young and marianne

young are not going to rest or relax no they knew what was coming right what was right for them right so i've also heard that marianne was an introvert and interestingly enough i know this is true she never joined the novel relief Society, which I don't know why. I've never been able to figure that out. As we are hitting, I'm looking at the dates here. And Jenny, you'll have to help me out because we have March of 41, July of 41. And our next section is September 42. When is the Relief Society?

What does it fall here? So this is the perfect time to talk about the Relief Society so the Navajo Relief Society was officially organized on March 17th 1842 so the idea for the March for the Relief Society started with Margaret Cook who was a seamstress who worked for Sarah Kimball who was kind of a wealthy woman. And she had noticed and there was so much effort going to building the temple, right? And she had noticed the men working on the temple who were in great need of shirts. Now I have to say this, my friends on the Joseph Smith papers joke that if they were going to make a video, a movie of the founding of the Nauvoo Relief Society,

they would be happy to be the men working on the Nauvoo Temple without their shirts on. And I'm like, no, no, no. We don't want to see you without your shirts on. That's funny. Yeah. It would be, maybe that's why the Relief Society is like, we've got to get those guys yeah we got to do something about this these are going to be church history paintings one day we better get yeah anthony sweats probably already done one right yeah he probably has i don't know freeberg wouldn't touch this yeah. Oh, but if he did, he might have made them look real good. Boy, they had some big dudes building that temple, yeah.

Yeah, so anyway, they decided to create a sewing society. And this is a really popular thing. There were many women's organizations around the country. They had started as early as the late 1700s. So women would see a need and would create organizations to take care of the poor or the infirm, the sick, you know, sewing societies, missionary societies. This was a very common thing in America. So they also knew that, so they gathered a little group of their friends together in early March and decided that they would create an official society and give themselves legitimacy or authority by writing a constitution. One of the women at that sort of planning meeting was Phoebe Rigdon, the wife of Sidney Rigdon. She knew Eliza R. Snow, and she knew that Eliza had taught their family school in Quincy, our town Quincy.

And she knew that Eliza had grown up. Her father had been a justice of the peace in Ohio, and Eliza had been his secretary and kept his records. So she seemed like the smartest person to do this. So they, they asked her to write a constitution for the sewing society. And this was Phoebe Rigdon and Sarah Kimball went to her and Sarah gave her, you guys, this is a cool story. Sarah gave her a little journal, a little book to write the Constitution in. And later, when they start the Navajo Relief Society, Willard Richards gives them a really nice big ledger. And Eliza just keeps that journal and she keeps her Navauvoo journal in there. So it's really cool. It's one of those books you could flip upside down and start from the other side, you know? And you see this beautiful illustration in it when it was given to Sarah Kimball,

who then gave it to Eliza, who was supposed to write a constitution in it, but then she kept it for her own journal. And it's her Nauvoo journal. It gives us great information. Anyway. Sarah Kimball, her husband's not a member of the church. Correct.

Sometimes we discount people who are not married to a member or are single and yet here's the beginnings of the largest organization, the longest standing organization in the world and it was started by this woman whose husband, great guy,

is not a member of the church. You said Sarah Cleveland before? Yeah, Sarah Cleveland. Yeah. She became the first counselor, and her husband also was not a member. And then there's Eliza R. Snow, who was single. Right. So we should never discount someone because they're not in what we'd say, what we think is an ideal, typical situation.

I love to say that Moroni's best work was done as a single adult at the end of the Book of Mormon, the last 10 chapters. I have no kin. I have no family. I am alone. Oh, that's so sad though. Come on.

It reminds me of my high school days, but okay. I have no friends. I have nowhere to go. Well, John wrote the article about having no friends. I'm the one. Find it in the new era. I have no friends by me. By John, by the way. Sorry to interrupt. Okay. That's okay. So Eliza writes a constitution and she takes it to Joseph Smith because she wants

to get his approval. And he looks at it and he says, this is the best constitution I've ever seen, but I have something better for you. And I want you to gather all these women and bring them to the second floor of the red brick store. And so a week later on March 17th, 1842, you get 21, 22 women gathered there and he organizes them after the order of heaven. And that's a phrase we see quite a bit in the Doctrine and Covenants and throughout Joseph Smith's legacy, after the order of heaven and after the pattern of the priesthood. Sarah Kimball remembers that he later said that the church was never fully organized until the women were organized.

So this really is a crucial part of the complete restoration of the church. So they talk a little bit about what they want to name the society. John Taylor thinks they should name it the Benevolent Society. But Emma was the one that was like, no, no, we're not calling it the Benevolent Society because there was the Washingtonian Benevolent Society. And they were known for a lot of corruption. And she's like, we in no way want to be associated with them. So she very early on sort of took the lead on this. She was elected or selected or voted in as president, which Joseph said came from her revelation in 1830, now section 25, where she was the elect lady. And she was the proper one to lead the Relief Society.

He later said that whenever the priesthood was organized on the earth in any dispensation, when it was fully organized, the women were also organized. So, we can't find that in the scriptures, but it makes sense to me. So, I love that. So, they created this incredible organization. Joseph Smith said that their purpose was twofold, to relieve the poor and to save souls. And I love that because it's a salvific organization. And Emma says on the very first day, she says, we are going to do something extraordinary. Oh, it's one of the best quotations ever. Right? If there was a boat stuck on the rapids of the Mississippi River, we expect to be called to their rescue.

We are going to do something extraordinary. We expect extraordinary occasions. So I love it. And that is absolutely what happened. They had incredible opportunities to serve. And I really, I believe this. And I, because I felt felt it myself as a member of the Relief Society, I feel like when we go and provide relief to others, we find relief for ourselves. So there was a period when I was called to be a Relief Society president in 2010. I was in graduate school, living in Northern Virginia. And about six weeks after, it was a family ward, it was a huge ward, it was the Crystal City Ward, for those of you that know the area, 800 people in the ward. And six weeks after my call, I was diagnosed with leukemia. And my bishop said, I really

think we need to keep you in this calling. You have two very able counselors. And it was true. I did. I had the best counselors. And they even, I was in the hospital for five weeks. And they even, this is before Zoom, okay? In the olden days, before Zoom.

The olden 2010-ish days. Right. Yeah. The elders quorum president got a camera for my laptop and I participated in ward council from my hospital room. But I'll tell you what, that was probably one of the things that saved my soul in a most horrible time of my life. Because I could have just curled up in a ball on my bed. But instead, I had my laptop. I had my phone. I sent cards in the mail to people and people would come visit me, even less active people would come visit me because you can't turn down a call

to go visit a bald Relief Society president, right? Yeah. Come, come visit. Right. We have this great picture. We had to do a picture of our presidency for Ward History. We had presidency meetings in my bed. So we have this picture and all of my sweet presidency put on hats so that we could all be, you couldn't see our hair.

Relief Society president while being treated for cancer leukemia yeah yeah good times it saved my life literally it saved my life i remember president uchtdorf saying it's often when we try to answer other people's prayers that we find the answers to our own yeah it sounds like that oh it reminds me reminds me of our friend, Meg Johnson, who's a quadriplegic after a fall, who said, the doctors fixed me, but service healed me. Her soul. It's true. I remember a really hard day. I had the best compassionate service leader. So when I was home from the hospital, I had two years of chemo. My compassionate service leader would arrange rides for me to the hospital to get chemo or stupid spinal taps, which I hated.

Terry Echo Hawk was the stake relief society president. And I literally, I think I threw up in her car six times on the way. I had a plastic bag, don't worry. But one day it was just extremely hard. And I had roommates, but they were gone working during the day. And so my compassionate service leader set up a calendar where someone would come visit me in the afternoon just to check in on me and make sure I was okay. And one day it was my sweet friend, Marian Anderson, and it had been a really hard day. And she just sat on the stairs with me where I was sitting and she just cried with me and put her arm around me. And that was just what I needed

was someone just to be with me. And it was my Relief Society sister. And I'm so, so grateful for that. So I have a testimony of Relief Society. Yeah. We're going to do something extraordinary. We are. In fact, I put that on my license plate cover. That's great. I love this. So much of this in your book, it's fun to hear it again about how it was organized and coming up with the name. And it was Emma who really pushed through the name Relief, wanted the relief in there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and just looking at Emma's life at the time, it was organized on March 17th, 1842. She, in August of 1841, so that's, you know, six months, whatever, eight months before, she lost her 14-month-old son, Don Carlos, to malaria.

And then in February, she had a miscar of women and she needed a place where she could feel safe and she could feel loved. And it came. Oh, my goodness. And she hadn't seen her mom. No. In fact, this kind of transitions into Baptisms for the Dead a little bit. See if you can follow my segue. Okay, yeah.

Okay, let's do it. So when Joseph and Emma left Harmony in the early fall of 1830, Emma said goodbye to her parents and never returned and broke off a relationship with them even. And I think they were on their way to Fayette, New York, which was quite a journey from Harmony. But I think it really reflects what the Lord told her in section 25, that she should go with Joseph at his going. Now, this was hard. Her father didn't approve of Joseph and their family, the Hale family was a very tight knit family. And when her siblings got

married, they all stayed in the area. Right. And her father was just concerned about Joseph, not the fact that he was uneducated, because her sisters had married people that were uneducated and poor. But the fact that he worried that he would take his daughter away and that he wouldn't be able to provide for his daughter. So he was really concerned about that. So in 1830, she said 41, I think, her nephew was living near Nauvoo. And so he came and told her the news. And Emma immediately sat down and wrote a letter to her mother. And it was the first letter that she had written. She caught her up on all the kids that she had and that she lost. And she begged her and her siblings to come to Illinois. Even if they didn't have to join the

church, she just needed family there. And her mother was too sick to come. So she died in Harmony. But I actually kind of, I love that Emma's first baby died in Harmony and her parents were buried right next to that baby. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's so beautiful. If you go there today, those graves are still there. That's all been restored, that area, really nicely. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I never knew that she hadn't written and then finally she wrote to her mom. Yeah. So actually, next I want to talk about baptisms for the dead. But immediately when Emma heard that her father had died, she did his baptism. She was baptized for him in the Mississippi River. And I love that.

This is, of course, before the time when Brigham Young said, okay, you have to do it. It's solely by gender. But there's some other great stories. And we know that Joseph Smith first taught that doctrine in August of 1840 at the funeral of Seymour Brunson. So it's interesting. We don't have a revelation on that, but we do have two letters that came in. This is all going to come together in this really cool way. You guys just hold on to your seats. So we don't have Revelation written down in the Doctrine and Covenants about baptisms for the dead, but we do have these two letters that come in September of 1841. This idea of losing people that hadn't been baptized into the church was

really troubling for the Smith family because of the loss of their son and brother, Alvin. He was such a dear person to them. And there were many others. So one of the people that was in the congregation listening to this sermon by Joseph, remember how I told you that he gave more sermons and less revelations at this time? One of these women, she's become one of my favorite women. Her name is Jane Nyman. And she and her husband were from Western Pennsylvania when they joined the church. And their teenage son Cyrus had died. And she and her husband often talked about how they wished he could be baptized.

So they moved to Nauvoo. They're so poor. Her husband dies. They're destitute. In fact, she later receives assistance from the Relief Society because they're so poor. So Jane Nyman was actually the first person in this dispensation to be baptized for the dead. And she went into the Mississippi River and was baptized for her son, Cyrus. And Vienna Jakes, who you've probably talked about before, rode her horse into the

river to be the witness. So there's our example of the first female witness. Isn't it awesome that today women can be witnesses? And it's just a beautiful story. So again, Emma was baptized for her father when he died. She was baptized for her mother and for her sister and some friends. But I would love to share some more women's experiences, if that's okay, with Baptism for the Dead. Phoebe Woodruff was living near Nauvoo when this talk was given by Joseph, this understanding of baptism. And her husband, Wilford Woodruff, was on a mission in England. And this is what she wrote to him. She said, Brother Joseph has learned by revelation that those in this church may be baptized for any of their relatives who are dead and had not a privilege of hearing this gospel, even for their children, parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uncles, and aunts.

As soon as they are baptized for their friends, they are released from prison, and they can claim them in the resurrection and bring them into the celestial kingdom. This doctrine is cordially received by the church and they are going forward in multitudes. Some are going to be baptized as many as 16 times in one day. They were so excited. And then Wilford Woodruff recorded that the moment I heard of it, my soul leaped with joy. I went forward and was baptized for all of my dead relatives I could think of. I felt to say hallelujah when the revelation came forth, revealing to us baptism for the dead. I felt that we had a right to rejoice in the blessings of heaven.

It's so beautiful. And those quotations for our listeners are in our Come Follow Me menu. It's on page 191. Yeah, they're gorgeous. Yeah. And this is one of those doctrines that Joseph Smith said once that good doctrine tastes good. I can taste the spirit of eternal life and so can you. This is one of those that you kind of hear it and you think, of course, of course, the Lord would make

a way for them to receive the blessing of the ordinance that never had a chance to hear it in this life. It's one of those, well, of course, this fits. And so, it's fun to hear their reaction. Imagine hearing that for the first time, you know? Yeah. Did any of you guys see the musical 1820? Yes. Oh my gosh. My favorite song, I think, well, maybe either first or second favorite, was after Joseph and Emma's first baby died after the burial.

And Joseph came to Emma and said, we have not lost our child. Our child will be saved. And they sing this incredible hallelujah praise song. And a soul's alive in Christ, I think is what it's called. So, and that song is available. So, any of you who have not heard it or do not have the soundtrack downloaded to your phones, you are going to want that because it is so joyous. I think it's the same kind of joy that we're seeing in these records here. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that show and I thought this is that. I remember that song. I remember. Oh, that's such a beautiful moment. You can feel how happy they were to know that they hadn't lost that baby forever. Yeah, and contrasting that with what does the preacher say at Alvin's funeral, right?

Yeah. Sorry. He'll burn in hell. He's an example to all of us, right? Put those two side by side and it even tastes better. Right. The truth. Right.

It's incredible. There's some other accounts there in the come follow me um manual the late kimball writes to her husband heber when he's on his mission and um she calls it a glorious doctrine so it's really really really exciting and that's really the the central message of these last two sections yes it, it is. It is. So let me tell you a little bit about what's going on. Joseph Smith had to go into hiding. Let me give you a little background because this involves the Relief Society. So the people in Missouri, the ex-governor, Lilburn Boggs, had wanted to extradite Joseph back to Missouri. And they all knew that was a death trap for him.

And so Emma and the Women of the Relief Society in August of 1842 wrote a petition and had thousands of people sign it. And they took it. So here's who took it to Governor Thomas Carlin of Illinois in Springfield. Emma Smith, Eliza Arsenault, and Amanda Barnes Smith. Now, this is so fascinating to me because these three women had experienced the tragedies of Missouri. Emma had her husband in prison. Eliza had a lot of stuff going on, some sexual assault most likely, lost everything.

Amanda Barnes-Smith was a widow whose husband and son were killed at Hans Mill. And she had to deal with the repercussions of that in getting her family and a very injured son to safety in Illinois. So these were three women that were very acquainted with the troubles of Missouri that took this petition to Governor Carlin. And he was very kind to them and very gracious. And after they, he said he would do everything he could to protect Joseph Smith. After they returned back to Nauvoo,

Emma keeps up a correspondence with him. And these letters are now in the Community of Christ, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ in their archive in Independence, Missouri. And if you read these letters, they are amazing. She is smart as a whip. She knows the city charter. She knows the state charter. She knows the US Constitution, and she knows how to speak in a way that will appeal to in the language of politics and policy. And she knows what she can demand. And I love it. She's amazing. So despite this correspondence between the two of them, Governor Carlin didn't keep his word and allowed people to come try to extradite Joseph. And so Joseph went into hiding. Our listeners may not realize that there were once politicians who didn't keep their word.

I don't know. That doesn't happen today. But it may be shocking to everyone. It was the 1800s. It was a different time. It was olden days. Before he went into hiding, Joseph met very briefly with the Relief Society on August 31st, 1842. And he said that he talked about baptisms for the dead, because this is still going

on. He says, all persons baptized for the dead must have a recorder present that he may be an eyewitness to record and testify of the truth and validity of the record. It will be necessary in the grand council, that's in air quotes, that these things be testified. And so then, just the next day, he writes a letter that is now section 127. Please join us for part two of this podcast.