Welcomed Into Zion

I'd like to start doing Sunday posts with a little different flavor, either borrowing from talks or lessons prepared for class or just whipping up something mildly edifying on the spot. I'll do some posts on Paul and his letters later in the year. For now, I'll share a passage I ran across in connection with President Hinckley's talk The Faith to Move Mountains from the October 2006 Conference. He recounted the story of how Brigham Young, in October 1856, sent out rescue caravans to find and feed migrating Saints stranded in snowy Wyoming and escort them back to Salt Lake City. I looked up the relevant material in Allen and Leonard's The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Quite a tale.

However, the paragraph I really liked talked not about the rescue mission of 1856 but instead talked about how regular emigration companies that trudged into the Salt Lake Valley (the ones that got there under their own power) were greeted as they arrived.

When new immigrants arrived in Salt Lake City, they were usually met as they emerged from Emigration Canyon and escorted to a block appropriately named Emigration Square. After being greeted by President Young or some other Church leader, they were treated to a celebration feast by the wards of the city. Then they were placed with families or in campgrounds until they could be permanently located. Some were sent to distant settlements or assigned to help colonize new areas, while others were given land and work in the Salt Lake City area.

Still quoting from Story of the Latter-day Saints, here's how a visitor to Salt Lake City described with admiration the process of placing the new arrivals:

An emigrant train had just come in, and the bishops had to put six hundred persons in the way of growing their cabbages and building their homes. One bishop said he could take five bricklayers, another two carpenters, a third a tinman, a fourth seven or eight farm-servants, and so on through the whole bench. In a few minutes I saw that two hundred of these poor emigrants had been placed in the way of earning their daily breads.

One can only imagine the thrill of receiving such a warm welcome and the gratitude at having a helping hand and first job or piece of land extended to the settlers upon arrival. I hope we in the Church of the 21st century are as welcoming to the thousands of new members who join our various congregations each year.

Comments

[Matt W.]

Dave, not to be the cynic, but to me, this sounds like picking teams for kickball. Maybe I was the only one who was always picked last, but I feel for that bloke who wasn't a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker. Of course, there are good ways to go about doing this, and we can assume the best.

[Dave]

Matt, it sounds like you subscribe to the "let no good deed go unpunished" school of human relations.

[john f.]

Dave, and don't forget the actual religious element. The feeling you imagine in these people of receiving this helping hand in temporal matters can only have been inhanced by the awesome recognition that they had arrived among the body of saints, something of such importance to the early converts that it is probably almost incomprehensible to us, although we can get a glimpse of it now and then when we move house to a new city and are received with enthusiasm and tons of support from a new ward.

[Carl Youngblood]

Part of me wishes we still had such a comprehensive program for collaboration in the church. As Nibley says, "We will still weep for Zion."

[Duff]

My great great grandfather was one of those sent out by Brother Brigham to rescue those who left late in the season and therefore got caught in the early winter storms. His story was heroic, and slightly exalted, but never the less deserves respect for the strength and character of those early pioneers. Most of those stories are slightly exaggerated to make the descendants of those good people feel proud of their ancestors.
Everyone wants to be proud of their forbearers, and we should be, but lets take it all with a tiny grain of salt.
I am as proud of my ancestors as anyone, but I have to tell you, I take it all with a little leavening. Everyone wants their predecessors to be perfect, brave and beyond reproach, but there is always a slightly different edge to the story.

[Equality]

When my wife and I moved cross country to Pleasant Grove, Utah for me to start law school at BYU, we no sooner pulled our 22-foot moving van into the driveway than we were met by half a dozen neighbors with cookies, lemonade, and helping hands. It was very gratifying. The people of our neghborhood were welcoming, friendly, and helpful. I'll always be grateful and have a warm place in my heart for them.