Feb 4th - Feb 10th
Weeks go by so fast, you get the schedule and look at what needs to be done, and then before you
know it it's Friday. We are having a great mission. The work moves forward and lives change.
We have been here one year and we have seen a lot of change. Some of the people we came
out with have gone home and new friends have come. We have extended our mission until
Dec. 15, 2019. We love it here . Some pictures this week of the Trail Center.
The Bookends
The foremost quality of our pioneers was faith. With faith in God, they did what every pioneer does—they stepped forward into the unknown: a new religion, a new land, a new way of doing things. With faith in their leaders and in one another, they stood fast against formidable opposition. When their leader said, “This is the right place,” they trusted, and they stayed. When other leaders said, “Do it this way,” they followed in faith.
Dallin H.Oaks October 1997
An instant city on the plains, Winter Quarters served as Church headquarters for less than a year, until the leadership moved west in 1847. By Christmas 1846, Church members had built a large stockade and about 700 homes ranging from solid, two-story structures to simple dugouts in the bluffs. For many, however, the rigors of the Iowa crossing, exposure, and poor nutrition and sanitation proved too much, and several hundred Saints died during the winter of 1846–47.
During the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48, more than 369 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints died in their encampment, called Winter Quarters, on the banks of the Missouri River near Omaha’s present-day Florence neighborhood. These men, women, and children were among the large group of church members immigrating westward to the valley of the Great Salt Lake under the leadership of Brigham Young. Today, their burial ground, which also memorializes the estimated six thousand Latter-day Saints who died en-route West between 1846 and the completion of the railroad in 1869, is commemorated by Avard T. Fairbanks’s Winter Quarters Monument, a beautifully executed sculptural program.
The main difference between the pioneers of 1846-1847 and subsequent Mormon emigrants was that each year the trek became a little easier as a result of experience, established (and enforced) discipline, better roads, ferries, bridges, and the ever-increasing number of trail side services like blacksmithing, medical assistance, military installations, trading establishments, and the telegraph. Also, the leadership of post-1848 companies was turned over to lower-level leaders and even to missionaries returning from their fields of labor.
THE HANDCART EMIGRANTS 1856-1860
Brigham Young decided to try this supposedly faster, easier, cheaper, and certainly more unusual way to bring thousands of European converts to Salt Lake City. This famous experiment involved 2,962 people in 10 companies from 1856 through 1860.
The handcarts generally carried up to 250 pounds (110 kg) of supplies and luggage, though they were capable of handling loads as heavy as 500 pounds (230 kg). Carts used in the first year's migration were made entirely of wood ("Iowa hickory or oak"); in later years a stronger design was substituted, which included metal element
Matt. 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
The Oxen at The Mormon Trail Center teach us many things but the Yoke reminds me of working together with Our Savior through this life and he will help us work through our trials.
We also learn that working together as families and Husband and Wife we can get through anything in this life. We can overcome life's trial and move forward as the Oxen did everyday without complaining about our circumstance, we will make our goals
know it it's Friday. We are having a great mission. The work moves forward and lives change.
We have been here one year and we have seen a lot of change. Some of the people we came
out with have gone home and new friends have come. We have extended our mission until
Dec. 15, 2019. We love it here . Some pictures this week of the Trail Center.
The Bookends
"Today, facing west, on the high bluff overlooking the city of Nauvoo, thence across the Mississippi, and over the plains of Iowa, there stands Joseph’s temple, a magnificent house of God. Here in the Salt Lake Valley, facing east to that beautiful temple in Nauvoo, stands Brigham’s temple, the Salt Lake Temple. They look toward one another as bookends between which there are volumes that speak of the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice, even the deaths of thousands who made the long journey from the Mississippi River to the valley of the Great Salt Lake."
President Gordon B Hinckley
The foremost quality of our pioneers was faith. With faith in God, they did what every pioneer does—they stepped forward into the unknown: a new religion, a new land, a new way of doing things. With faith in their leaders and in one another, they stood fast against formidable opposition. When their leader said, “This is the right place,” they trusted, and they stayed. When other leaders said, “Do it this way,” they followed in faith.
Dallin H.Oaks October 1997
During one of the earlier crossings of the river, a boat sank, and Hosea Stout recounts how several Saints were tossed in the cold and unrelenting waves.
Describing some of the pioneers’ first camps, Gilbert Belnap states that some had only a sheet drawn over a few poles to make a tent. He remembers hearing the crying of children and the groaning of those sick with fever JULY 2013 THE TRAIL OF HOPE: EXODUS FROM NAUVOO
Iowa -March snow, cold, rain, and awful mud made the trek miserable and exhausting. To cross the steep-banked Chariton River, they double-teamed the wagons to descend and ascend the muddy banks. “I spent the day helping the teams till I was so sore and tired I could scarcely walk,” William Clayton wrote.
They established Chariton Camp (south of present-day Centerville) for an extended stop, 22–31 March. “The mud of our street and about our fires, in our tents etc. is indescribable,” Sister Snow said on 25 March. President Young recorded that late March storms and cold caused “severe colds” among the campers. While encamped, President Young regrouped the 400 or fewer wagons into six better-structured units of 50 or more wagons each.
An instant city on the plains, Winter Quarters served as Church headquarters for less than a year, until the leadership moved west in 1847. By Christmas 1846, Church members had built a large stockade and about 700 homes ranging from solid, two-story structures to simple dugouts in the bluffs. For many, however, the rigors of the Iowa crossing, exposure, and poor nutrition and sanitation proved too much, and several hundred Saints died during the winter of 1846–47.
During the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48, more than 369 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints died in their encampment, called Winter Quarters, on the banks of the Missouri River near Omaha’s present-day Florence neighborhood. These men, women, and children were among the large group of church members immigrating westward to the valley of the Great Salt Lake under the leadership of Brigham Young. Today, their burial ground, which also memorializes the estimated six thousand Latter-day Saints who died en-route West between 1846 and the completion of the railroad in 1869, is commemorated by Avard T. Fairbanks’s Winter Quarters Monument, a beautifully executed sculptural program.
Later that day, Clayton noted in his journal an idea that came to mind.
"I walked some this afternoon in company with Orson Pratt and suggested to him the idea of fixing a set of wooden cog wheels to the hub of a wagon wheel, in such order as to tell the exact number of miles we travel each day," he wrote. "He seemed to agree with me that it could be easily done at a trifling expense."
"About noon today Brother Appleton Harmon completed the machinery on the wagon called a 'roadometer' by adding a wheel to revolve once in ten miles, showing each mile and also each quarter mile we travel, and then casing the whole over so as to secure it from the weather," Clayton recorded in his journal.
Charles Dickens Visits an Emigrant Ship
A visitor to the ship Amazon, leaving the London dock in 1863, was the novelist Charles Dickens. "I . . . had come aboard this emigrant ship to see what eight hundred Latter-day Saints were like," he wrote. "Indeed, I think it would be difficult to find eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much beauty and so much strength and capacity for work among them" (The Uncommercial Traveler[1863],
Fully expecting to "bear testimony against" the Latter-day Saints, Dickens changed his opinion after observing the passengers: "To my great astonishment," he said, "they did not deserve it"
In Dickens's book, The Uncommercial Traveler, he describes the scene he beheld with wonder:
"Nobody is in an ill temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck, in every corner where it is possible to find a few spare feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people in every unsuitable attitude for writing, are writing letters"
Brigham Young decided to try this supposedly faster, easier, cheaper, and certainly more unusual way to bring thousands of European converts to Salt Lake City. This famous experiment involved 2,962 people in 10 companies from 1856 through 1860.
The handcarts generally carried up to 250 pounds (110 kg) of supplies and luggage, though they were capable of handling loads as heavy as 500 pounds (230 kg). Carts used in the first year's migration were made entirely of wood ("Iowa hickory or oak"); in later years a stronger design was substituted, which included metal element
Matt. 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
A yoke is a wooden beam, normally used between a pair of oxen or other animals that enables them to pull together on a load. A yoke places animals side-by-side so they can move together in order to accomplish a task.
Consider the Lord’s uniquely individual invitation to “take my yoke upon you.” Making and keeping sacred covenants yokes us to and with the Lord Jesus Christ. In essence, the Savior is beckoning us to rely upon and pull together with Him, even though our best efforts are not equal to and cannot be compared with His. As we trust in and pull our load with Him during the journey of mortality, truly His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
We are not and never need be alone. We can press forward in our daily lives with heavenly help. Through the Savior’s Atonement we can receive capacity and “strength beyond [our] own” (“Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” Hymns, no. 220). As the Lord declared, “Therefore, continue your journey and let your hearts rejoice; for behold, and lo, I am with you even unto the end”
Elder David A Bednar 2014
The Oxen at The Mormon Trail Center teach us many things but the Yoke reminds me of working together with Our Savior through this life and he will help us work through our trials.
We also learn that working together as families and Husband and Wife we can get through anything in this life. We can overcome life's trial and move forward as the Oxen did everyday without complaining about our circumstance, we will make our goals
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