MIssionary Experiences

We have interesting full time missionaries these two weeks as usual. John has a young missionary whose brother is also serving in our mission so he had the benefit of the brother’s PAF5 file but the challenge of extensive research and documentation beyond what has been done previously. John has the family back into England and is getting lots of interesting information.

My student had Mormon pioneer heritage and it has been a marvelous experience to read first-hand accounts of the Martin and Willey Handcart Companies as well as the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition. I have heard these stories before but it is amazing to see it from the point of a direct descendent with actual documents. Another fascinating story was of John Hardison Redd from North Carolina then Tennessee who owned slaves. He joined the Church and freed his slaves but two of the black women and four of their children came to Utah with him and his family in 1850. The experiences of polygamous families are told in detail from living together in a simple log home to having identical but separate homes to moving the second wife to Mexico because of the persecution. We are so very grateful for our missionary experience and the blessings which have come from it.