Mom and I are excited to begin General Conference sessions tonight with the Women's Broadcast at 7:00pm our time. We have enjoyed a beautiful Fall day serving in the various sites. I served in the Brickyard and mom served in the School House. Mom had the longer shift from 9:45am to 5:00pm and I served from 12 noon to 5:00pm.
In my last tour this afternoon I was given some uplifting news that I will share briefly and with humility. A member sister and her Catholic husband and two Catholic friends came just at closing to the brick yard. When they saw me they said, "we saw you at Rendezvous last night". I thought that that was nice and they were complimentary, but when the three left for the restrooms and the sister and I were chatting, she told me that from the Rendezvous Play, and my part as the Editor, her husband and their friends came away with a much different and positive view of what it was like to be a Mormon and experience what the Mormons did in the 1840's. She thanked me for the insights that were shared last night and I could not help but feel to thank Heavenly Father, again, for His influence in my part.
This morning, mom and I were up earlier than usual and we got off on our walk by 6:00am after our morning devotional and prayers. The morning air was crisp and clean and there was a light fog covering the lawns again. We saw a family of deer off in the distance and really enjoyed the invigorating walk.
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| The lower area of Nauvoo and the morning fog with the temple just in the horizon. |
After breakfast I walked mom over to the School House. She had the all day shift and here is her picture as she began her day;
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| Let the day begin! |
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| The 1840's computer! |
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| Class is ready to begin! |
And that's how things were this morning and afternoon here in Nauvoo for mom and me! We will listen to the Women's Conference here in about an hour and then prepare for our rest and the Sabbath Day tomorrow. The saddest part of the day was that BYU lost to Michigan 31-0.....
I found this article about Sidney Rigdon to be very interesting as I close my blog tonight!
In late October of 1830, roughly six months after the
publication of the Book of Mormon, four LDS missionaries — including
Parley Pratt, who had known Sidney Rigdon previously — came through
Kirtland, Ohio, where Sidney had built up a communal church, and
introduced him to both the Book of Mormon and Mormonism. Rigdon was a
devout and studious preacher of the Bible, even naming one of his sons
after the great 14th-century reformer and Bible translator John Wycliff.
Meanwhile, almost from its first publication, it had
become obvious to those who knew them both that Joseph Smith lacked the
education and ability to have written the Book of Mormon. Accordingly,
critics seeking an alternative human explanation for the book needed a
secret ghostwriter, and they soon imagined that they’d found him in the
much better educated Sidney Rigdon. Sidney’s supposed first encounter
with the book, they decided, must have been mere play-acting.
In 1865, more than two decades after Sidney’s
excommunication, John Wycliff Rigdon, who, as a young adolescent, had
followed his parents out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, interviewed his father about the Book of Mormon.
"I concluded,” he later wrote, “I would make an
investigation for my own satisfaction and find out, if I could, if he
had all these years been deceiving his family and the world, by telling
that which was not true, and I was in earnest about it. If Sidney
Rigdon, my father, had thrown his life away by telling a falsehood and
bringing sorrow and disgrace upon his family, I wanted to know it and
was determined to find out the facts, no matter what the consequences
might be.”
In his mid-30s by this time, John hadn’t seen his
father for a considerable while. Among other things, though, he’d
visited the Mormon settlements in Utah, which, he said, “had not
impressed me very favorably toward the Mormon church, and as to the
origin of the Book of Mormon I had some doubts.” So he came right to the
point:
“You have been charged,” he said, “with writing that
book and giving it to Joseph Smith to introduce to the world. You have
always told me one story; that you never saw the book until it was
presented to you by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery; and all you ever
knew of the origin of that book was what they told you and what Joseph
Smith and the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates had told
you. Is this true? If so, all right; if it is not, you owe it to me and
to your family to tell it. You are an old man and you will soon pass
away, and I wish to know if Joseph Smith, in your intimacy with him for
14 years, has not said something to you that led you to believe he
obtained that book in some other way than what he had told you. Give me
all you know about it, that I may know the truth.”
His father, he recorded, raised his hand above his
head and slowly said, with tears running down his cheeks, “My son, I can
swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of
that book is true. Your mother and sister … were present when that book
was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin
of that book was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and
the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all
of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story, and
that was that he found it engraved upon gold plates in a hill near
Palmyra, New York. … I believed him, and now believe he told me the
truth.”
Afterward, John recalled, his father also declared
“that Mormonism was true; that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and this
world would find it out some day.” And, years later, just before her own
death, John’s mother confirmed Sidney’s account, “for she was present
at the time and knew that was the first time he ever saw it, and that
the stories told about my father writing the Book of Mormon were not
true."
Impelled by those conversations, John ultimately
moved to Utah and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. At his death in 1912, he was buried in Salt Lake City.
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