Rescuing those on the Plains

1
Rescuing those on the Plains

• Khinckley1_at_yahoo.com

2
Big Lous Hero
                                                
                       Sent in by Sarah Malcolm
3
Three Rescues

1. Rescue the Saints

4
Levi Savage

• "Brethren and sisters, what I have said I know to
  be true but, seeing you are to go forward, I
  will go with you, will help you all I can, will
  work with you, will rest with you, will suffer
  with you, and if necessary I will die with you.
  May God in his mercy bless and preserve us. Amen"

5
October 5th, 1856

• I will now give this people the subject and the
  text for the elders who may speak today and
  during the Conference. It is this On the fifth
  day of October, 1856, many of our brethren and
  sisters are on the plains with hand-carts, and
  probably many are now seven hundred miles from
  this place, and they must be brought here we
  must send assistance to them. The text will beto
  get them here!
• "That is my religion, that is the dictation of
  the Holy Ghost that I possess it is to save this
  people. We must bring them in from the plains,
• "I shall call upon the bishops this dayI shall
  not wait until tomorrow, nor until next dayfor
  sixty good mule teams, and twelve or fifteen
  wagons. I do not want to send oxen. I want good
  horses and mules. They are in this territory, and
  we must have them also twelve tons of flour and
  forty good teamsters, besides those that drive
  the teams.
• "You may rise up now, and give your names

6
Brigham YoungAddress November 30

• The afternoon meeting will be omitted, for I wish
  the sisters to go home and prepare to give those
  who have just arrived a mouthful of something to
  eat", and to wash them and nurse them up. . . .
  Were I in the situation of those persons who have
  just come in, . . .
• I would give more for a dish of pudding or a
  baked potato and salt, . . . than I would for all
  your prayers, though you were to stay here all
  afternoon and pray. Prayer is good, but when
  baked potatoes and milk are needed, prayer will
  not supply their place.

7
Question

• Who do you know who needs to be rescued?

8
Psalm of Ammon

• Alma 26
• 12 Yea, I know that I am nothing as to my
  strength I am weak
• 13 Behold, how many thousands of our brethren has
  he loosed from the pains of hell and they are
  brought to sing redeeming love, and this because
  of the power of his word which is in us
• 15 Yea, they were encircled about with
  everlasting darkness and destruction but behold,
  he has brought them into his everlasting light
• 17 Who could have supposed that our God would
  have been so merciful as to have snatched us from
  our awful, sinful, and polluted state?
• 19 why did he not consign us to an awful
  destruction, yea, why did he not let the sword of
  his justice fall upon us, and doom us to eternal
  despair?
• 20 Oh, my soul, almost as it were, fleeth at the
  thought. Behold, he did not exercise his justice
  upon us, but in his great mercy hath brought us
  over that everlasting gulf of death and misery,
  even to the salvation of our souls.
• 21 And now behold, my brethren, what natural man
  is there that knoweth these things? I say unto
  you, there is none that knoweth these things,
  save it be the penitent.

9
Just one storyMary Goble

• "My mother never got well. . . . She died
  between the Little and Big Mountains. . . .
  She was forty-three years of age. . . . We
  arrived in Salt Lake City nine o'clock at
  night the eleventh of December, 1856. Three
  out of the four that were living were frozen.
  My mother was dead in the wagon. . . .
• "Early next morning Brigham Young came. . . .
  When he saw our condition, our feet frozen and
  our mother dead, tears rolled down his
  cheeks. . . . The doctor amputated
  my toes . . . while the sisters were
  dressing mother for
  her grave. . . . That afternoon she was buried.
  
• "I have often thought of my mother's words before
  we left England.
  'Polly, I want to go to Zion while my
  children are small so that they can be
  raised in the Gospel of
  Jesus Christ.' "

10
(No Transcript)
11
The Last Crossing of the Sweetwater
12
Three Rescues

1. Rescue the Saints
2. Rescue the Rescuers

13
Capt Edward Martins Co

• Rations reduced to 3 oz of flour a day

14
Devils Gate

• Handcart companys personal belongings were left
  at the base with brethren to guard them, and
  retrieved the next spring

15
Daniel Jones

• In Feb, the first Indian came to our campAt the
  time of his arrival we were out of everything,
  having not only eaten the hides taken from the
  cattle killed, but had eaten the wrappings from
  the wagon-tongues, old moccasin-soles were eaten
  also, and a piece of buffalo hide that had been
  used for a foot mat for two months
• -A few weeks later-
• When another company arrived, some of our boys
  were getting the pack saddle soaked up ready for
  cooking the hide covering. Boyd always calls me
  the man that ate the pack saddle. But this is
  slander. The kindness of him and others prevented
  me from eating my part of it. I think if they had
  not arrived, probably I would have taken a wing
  or leg, but dont think I would have eaten the
  whole of it.. As it was, the saddle was allowed
  to dry up again, and may be in existence yet and
  doing well so far as I know

16

• Arza Hinckley and
• Ephraim Hanks

17
Three Rescues

1. Rescue the Saints
2. Rescue the Rescuers
3. Provide the saving ordinances of the Temple

18
3rd Rescue

• Within the boundaries of the Riverton stake is
  Rock Creek, where the bodies of 15 members of the
  Willie Company are buried.
• "A few years ago the spirit of the Willie people
  began to rest upon me," Pres. Lorimer said at a
  stake-wide meeting He said he had asked stake
  members to pray about the Willie Project. At
  first, he thought the inspiration he had felt was
  to petition the Lord for help in acquiring the
  site at Rock Creek, where the graves are located
• Speaking at the stake-wide meeting, Pres. Kim W.
  McKinnon, second counselor in the stake
  presidency, told the events that made them
  understand what it was they were to accomplish.
  They had heard about Family Search, a set of
  computer tools the Church has developed for
  family history research,
• The stake presidency felt an urgency to
  acquire Family Search for the two
  family history centers in the stake.
  The urgency was so great that Pres.
  McKinnon made a trip to
  Salt Lake
  City to iron out obstacles and expedite
  procedures so the
  stake could acquire
  the computer software

19
Riverton Stake Cont.

• Pres. McKinnon related, "I asked Pres. Lorimer,
  'Why have I felt so pushed about these computers?
  Why the great sense of urgency?'
• "Pres. Lorimer looked at me and said, 'It is the
  Willie people.'
• "The response of the presidency was, 'What made
  you think of that?' Pres. Lorimer indicated that
  the words had come into his mind in a distinct
  and unconfused manner that he had never before
  experienced. The entire stake presidency then
  knew that the Willie Handcart Site at Rock Creek
  was only a small portion of the urging they had
  felt over the years."
• They found that of the 15-plus one additional
  Willie pioneer who died just prior to entering
  the Salt Lake Valley-all needed some type of
  temple work to be done.
• "We were embarrassed and humbled that these
  people had been waiting for over 135 years for
  all this to come together," Pres. McKinnon said.
• "The sad question came why hasn't the work been
  done for these brave people who died on the high
  plains of Wyoming trying to get to a temple? Our
  research indicates that many of them did not have
  families who were members of the Church, and as
  such became lost souls with no kin to do their
  work. It is worthy of note that 100 percent of
  those that died need to be sealed to their
  parents."

20
The Third Rescue

• Pres. John Levi Kitchen, first counselor in the
  stake presidency, told of a 10-year-old girl from
  Denmark who was traveling with a family in the
  Willie Company to join her sister in Salt Lake
  City. She had been gathering sagebrush at Rock
  Creek to help keep the family warm and to cook
  the evening meal. Weary from her work and cold
  from the freezing temperature, she sat down by
  the handcart wheel with her arms full of
  sagebrush. Her frozen body was found the next
  morning and was buried along with 12 others who
  died during the night along Rock Creek.
• Her name had not been listed on the register of
  the handcart company, and no record of temple
  work for her had been found prior to the research
  undertaken by the Riverton stake leaders.
• "We asked the brethren in Salt Lake, 'Why now?'
  and 'Why us? They said this apparently wasn't
  possible until the resources were developed to
  allow it to happen. 'They died within the
  confines of your stake, and Pres. Lorimer is
  their stake president. Now that the time is right
  it should appropriately come to him
• Pres. Lorimer told of a telephone conversation he
  had with President Hinckley regarding the
  project. "He became quite upset and asked me why
  the work for these people has not been done. And
  I said, 'President Hinckley, I don't know.' And
  he said, 'President, don't you stop until it's
  finished.'

21
Bro Webster

• "I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and
  weary from illness and lack of food that I could
  hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have
  looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill
  slope and I have said, I can go only that far and
  there I must give up for I cannot pull the load
  through it.
• I have gone to that sand and when I reached it,
  the cart began pushing me! I have looked back
  many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my
  eyes saw no one. I knew then that the Angels of
  God were there.
• "Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart?
  No! Neither then nor any minute of my life since.
  The price we paid to become acquainted with God
  was a privilege to pay
• I am thankful that I was privileged to come in
  the Martin Handcart Company."