Last Sunday our Stake President gave a fireside for the Relief Society. While he and another woman shared some things, when he started talking about Martin's Cove paying attention because I have been there with my parents and my uncle and aunt went on a mission there.
There were saints to left to late in the summer and suffered and died from starvation and cold as they pushed and pulled hard carts to Zion. Martin's Cove is where they found some refuge from the blizzard. They were saved because Brigham Young told the brethren there in SLC to "go and bring them in". Now families and youth groups can reenact this trek for a day or days.
Last summer the youth in my stake went and walked this trek. The stake president did it with them. He showed us pictures of him hugging the youth, and told us this story:
When they started this journey there at the visitor center the kids had the name of a real person who had started on that journey. Some of them lived and some of them died. They started by singing the song about all the Pioneer's "
Come, Come Ye Saints" . When they got to the line that says this: "and should be die, before our journey's through, happy day, all is well" those boys and girls who had the names of those who died left the group and stood away off. I can imagine it being a pretty emotional thing to see that.
When they all got back together again, the Stake president hugged a young man and told him he was great, then he grabbed a young woman, gave her a hug and told her what she was good at. He continue to do that to each and every one of those young men and women. The president said, he felt like a patriarch, because the could tell them something about each one of them, about their talents, what they could do in the future. Of course the group kept walking, kept marching and when they got to Martin's cove, he sat down on the bench and was just pondering, thinking, taking it all in when the words "President, you know you'll loose some of them", came to him and he wept like he never had before.
He then talked to us about Enoch's witnessing the
Savior weep for his children, the
workmanship of his hands and the
chain that Satan had wrapped around the world.
At the end of the fireside he pronounced a blessing on the women.
- to the single sisters, that they will have a witness of their self-worth.
- to the mothers in Zion that they will have a larger capacity of love, that their home will be shielded as they immerse themselves in the scriptures, the prophets and prayer.
-to those who have lost loved ones who have been faithful will
understand peace in their hearts and in only a short time they will be
with the ones they have lost.
What a wonderful Stake President!
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