We’ve Done All We Can

When Louise Hadley was 21, she moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, for work. She boarded with Freda and Will Bunnage, recent converts who hosted cottage meetings in their home. Louise began attending those meetings and reading the Book of Mormon. She received a testimony of the truthfulness of it through the Holy Ghost but had to return to her home at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, an area where there were no members of the Church. She wrote to the president of the North Central States Mission, asking if she could be baptized. Arrangements were made, and she was baptized on June 21, 1940. Three years later, she met and married Frederick W. Hillyer, an airman stationed at nearby Macdonald, Manitoba. She introduced him to the gospel, and he was baptized on April 2, 1944.

The Church continued to grow in that area, and a branch was established. Frederick was called as branch president in 1954. For several years, the Saints of the branch dreamed of renting or owning their own building, where they would not have to share the space. They began a building fund and searched for ways to raise money—settling on farming.

Louise and Frederick Hillyer on their wedding day, 1943.

Frederick obtained permission from his commanding officer for branch members to farm a 20-acre plot of land near the east end of the runways to raise money for their building fund. In June 1955, Frederick called a special fast to pray for the weather to change so that the men of the branch could till the soil and plant the flax. That spring had been unusually wet, and it would be nearly impossible to work the land without good weather to dry the sod. That night, the storm broke, and for 10 days, the sun shone brightly, allowing the men to go to work. “We are indeed a blessed people who trust in the Lord,” Frederick recorded, “and we acknowledge his hand in all things.”

When it came time to harvest, Frederick; his children; and Howard Layne, his counselor, went to the field to begin swathing and cutting the flax to lay in rows to dry. Dark clouds gathered in the southwest, and it began to rain heavily. They knelt by their tractor, and Frederick prayed, “Heavenly Father, we have done all that we can to get this crop. We’ve looked after it, and I feel we may not be able to harvest it.” Frederick and Louise’s daughter, Myrna, recalled that their prayers were answered, and she “watched those clouds move in and split off north and south right around it.” They were able to complete the harvest.

Frederick was promised in his patriarchal blessing that he had “faith like Moses, to perform any miracle necessary for the salvation of the House of Israel.” This promise proved true in his life, especially during his time serving as branch president and as the members fasted and prayed and worked together to raise the money necessary to rent their own building to meet in.