“Our Wish and Our Mission,” chapter 6 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 6: “Our Wish and Our Mission”
Chapter 6
Our Wish and Our Mission
Hirini Whaanga’s face brightened as a group of Māori Saints welcomed him and his fellow missionaries to their village, Te Horo, on New Zealand’s North Island. Māori Saints loved Hirini as a grandfather, and they were proud of his work as a full-time missionary. Whenever he visited their settlements, they greeted him and his companions with the same familiar phrase: “Haere mai!” Come in!
In Te Horo, some people believed the rumors about the Whaangas’ mistreatment in Utah. Some of them had even heard that Hirini died. Brushing these stories aside, Hirini asked, “Do I look as though I am dead? Do I look as though I am ill-treated?”1
The missionaries held a two-day conference with Saints from the ten branches in the area. When it was his turn to address the congregation, Hirini felt inspired to speak about the salvation of the dead. Afterward, most of the Saints in the congregation gave him the names of their deceased ancestors so he and his family could perform their temple work.2
Soon after the conference, Hirini traveled with mission president Ezra Stevenson and two other missionaries to a remote village called Mangamuka. Missionaries had been ordered out of the village a few years earlier and warned never to return. Hirini had a relative who lived there, though, so they decided to call on him.
The missionaries approached Mangamuka cautiously. When they asked for Tipene, Hirini’s relative, they were told to wait outside the village. The welcome was far less friendly than those they received elsewhere on their journey, and Hirini was discouraged.
After a while, Tipene emerged from the village and tearfully embraced Hirini. They then had a meal together, and Tipene took the missionaries to a comfortable dwelling. The mood in the village became more friendly, and the elders were invited to speak to those who had gathered.
Before he spoke, Ezra assured his listeners that he had not come to condemn them but to invite them to share in the truth of his message. The congregation listened with interest, and several men responded favorably to his words. Hirini also spoke, preaching boldly until midnight, when his companions went to bed. He then went on talking well into the early hours of the morning.3
Ezra and one of the other elders had to leave that morning, but the villagers invited Hirini and the remaining missionary, George Judd, to teach them more. The missionaries stayed four days, held five meetings, and baptized two young men. Hirini and George then preached in other villages, baptizing eighteen more people by the time they rejoined Ezra a few weeks later.4
Hirini continued traveling with the mission president, instructing the Saints and collecting their genealogies. Often, as Ezra listened to Hirini preach, he marveled at his friend’s ability to engage Māori audiences. “He bears a strong testimony and impresses the people,” Ezra wrote in his journal. “He knows just how to get at the Māori feeling, so much better than we do.”5
In April 1899, Hirini received an honorable release from his mission. A newspaper report announcing his return to Salt Lake City praised his labors in New Zealand. “A great impetus has been given to the work in that far distant land,” it read. “In every district genealogical information was obtained and the faith and zeal of the Māori Saints has been strengthened and increased.”6
That spring, John Widtsoe was studying chemistry at the University of Göttingen in central Germany. His work at the Agricultural College in Logan led him to research carbohydrates, and at Göttingen he was able to study under the leading scientist in his field. Now he was only months away from completing his doctorate degree.
John had married Leah Dunford in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1898, two months before the couple moved to Europe. Before leaving, John was set apart as a missionary to Europe by Leah’s uncle Brigham Young Jr., authorizing him to preach the gospel when he was not pursuing his education. Since Germany was renowned for its conservatories, Leah’s seventeen-year-old sister, Emma Lucy Gates, joined them to study music. As of April 2, 1899, John and Leah were also the proud parents of a baby girl, Anna Gaarden Widtsoe, named for John’s mother.7
Although John was still supporting his mother and younger brother, Osborne, who was serving a mission in Tahiti, he and Leah could afford to live in Europe thanks in part to a generous financial award from Harvard. Göttingen was an old university town surrounded by tree-topped hills and acres of farmland. As the only Latter-day Saints in the city, John, Leah, and Lucy held their own sacrament meetings and gospel study. Occasionally, missionaries in the German Mission would come to Göttingen to visit them.8
The Church in Germany had about a thousand members. There were German translations of the standard works as well as a twice-monthly Church magazine, Der Stern. But only five German Saints held the Melchizedek Priesthood, and growth was slow.9 Many Germans were skeptical of churches from foreign lands, and missionaries were frequently banished from cities. Saints sometimes had to meet in secret or endure police surveillance.10
In late spring, Lucy left to study at the Berlin Conservatory of Music. Her grandmother Lucy Bigelow Young came from Utah to live as her chaperone. When John finished his thesis, he, Leah, and baby Anna joined them in Berlin. He then began studying for his doctoral exam, the last step in completing his degree. He also took a six-week trip to Norway and Denmark to preach the gospel, visit relatives, and research his genealogy.11
Having not been in Norway since he moved from the country at age eleven, John was thrilled to be around more family. “I have had an excellent time with my mother’s folks,” he wrote Leah in September. “I was received royally and treated like ‘somebody.’”12
When John returned to Germany, he traveled back to Göttingen to take his exam while Leah and the baby stayed in Berlin. His professors seemed optimistic about his success, but John worried about disappointing them.
“I have laid the matter in the hands of the Lord,” he wrote Leah on November 20, the day of the exam. “If I do not get it, which God forbid, I shall have no self-reproach. The fasting and prayers of you all cheers me more than I can tell you.”13
When the time of his examination arrived, John went before a board of more than a dozen professors, each prepared to interrogate him about his research. John did his best to answer their questions to their satisfaction. When they finished two or three hours later, they sent him out of the room while they decided his fate.
Later that evening, after she finished her fast, Leah received a telegram from John. “Magna by God’s grace,” it read. She knew just what it meant. John had passed his exam and completed his doctorate with honors, magna cum laude.14
A few weeks later, on December 4, 1899, B. H. Roberts waited nervously in Washington, DC, to take his oath of office as Utah’s newly elected representative in the United States Congress. Stacked at the front of the chamber of the House of Representatives were twenty-eight rolls of paper, each about two feet in diameter. On them, B. H. knew, were the names of seven million people who did not want him to be there.15
Three years after losing the election of 1895, B. H. had run for Congress again, this time with the consent of the First Presidency.16 His campaign was a success, but critics of the Church immediately seized on the victory to undermine the Saints’ emerging image as a law-abiding, patriotic, monogamous people. Protestant ministers and women’s organizations led the assault, warning people far and wide that B. H., a polygamist Church leader who had fathered children with a plural wife after the Manifesto, was coming to Washington to champion plural marriage, corrupt public morals, and extend the political power of the Church.17
As outrage over B. H.’s election grew, editor William Randolph Hearst joined in the fray. Eager to use the controversy to boost sales of his New York City newspaper, Hearst published scathing articles about B. H. and the Church, portraying both as threats to American morals. The petition of seven million names on the floor of the House chamber, in fact, had been assembled by Hearst’s newspaper to pressure lawmakers into denying B. H. his seat in Congress.18
Shortly after noon, B. H. was summoned to take his oath of office. As he walked to the front of the chamber, a congressman stood up and calmly motioned to exclude B. H. from the House because of his plural marriages. Another congressman seconded the motion. “He is a polygamist,” the man said, “and his election is an assault upon the American home.”19
The following day, B. H. tried to assure lawmakers that he had no desire to use his new position to defend plural marriage. “I am not here to advocate it,” he told them. “There is no occasion for championing that cause. It is a question that is settled.”20
Unconvinced, the House assigned a special committee of congressmen to review B. H.’s case and the nature of his plural marriages. They were particularly troubled that he had continued living with his plural wives and having children with them. When the committee presented evidence of these relationships, B. H. insisted he had not openly defied the law. Many Latter-day Saint men continued to live discreetly with plural wives they married before the Manifesto, and they did not believe that doing so violated their agreement to obey the laws of the United States from that time forward. Yet the committee disagreed, and on January 25, 1900, an overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives voted to exclude him.21
B. H.’s dismissal from the House of Representatives made the front pages of newspapers across the country. In Utah, the First Presidency admired B. H.’s bold defense of his principles in Washington, but they regretted the backlash his election set off against the Latter-day Saints. The American press had again turned a critical eye on the Church.22
Although some of what the newspapers reported was inaccurate, they were correct on the basic point: plural marriage still existed in the Church. And it was not simply that men and women maintained their plural marriages after the Manifesto.23 Having lived, taught, and suffered for plural marriage for more than half a century, many Saints could not imagine a world without it. In fact, some members of the Twelve—acting with the approval of George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith, or their intermediaries—had quietly performed new plural marriages in the eight years since the Manifesto. During that time, four of the apostles had also married plural wives themselves.
Saints who married after the Manifesto did so believing the Lord had not completely renounced plural marriage but had simply removed the divine command for the Saints to sustain and defend it as a practice of the Church.24 In the Manifesto, moreover, Wilford Woodruff had advised the Saints to submit to antipolygamy laws in the United States. He had said nothing in the document about the laws of Mexico or Canada, however. Most of the new plural marriages occurred in those countries, and a small number had been performed in the United States.25
Now, amid the fallout over B. H. Roberts’s election, Church leaders began to see the harm in consenting to a polygamous Saint running for federal office. It was not something they intended to do again.26
In April 1900, Zina Presendia Card, the daughter of Relief Society general president Zina Young, returned home to Cardston, Canada, after spending several weeks with her seventy-nine-year-old mother in Salt Lake City. During the visit, she and her mother had traveled to the Oneida Stake in southern Idaho to speak at a Relief Society conference.
“She stood the trip fine, and spoke like an angel to her sisters,” Zina Presendia reported in a letter to her younger sister Susa Gates. “I am so proud of her.”
Yet Zina Presendia fretted about her mother’s advanced age. Cardston was about seven hundred miles from Salt Lake City. If her mother’s health took a sudden turn for the worse, Zina Presendia might not be able to see her again before she passed away.27
Back in Cardston, Zina Presendia resumed her responsibilities as president of the Alberta Stake’s YLMIA. Fourteen years had passed since President John Taylor had asked her husband, Charles Card, to lead a group of polygamous Saints to Canada. Since then, the Saints had established a dozen settlements in southern Alberta. The Cardston Stake was founded in 1895, with Charles as president. Although the era of Latter-day Saint colonization had drawn to a close, new families and businesses continued to move to the area, helping to build up the Church.28 Now there were many young Saints coming of age in the area, and Zina Presendia was deeply concerned about them.
Cardston was relatively isolated, but its young people were not immune to such ills as gambling and alcohol abuse. Some adults in town, she knew, were setting bad examples for the younger generation.29
Also, it was clear that Latter-day Saint youth in Cardston and other communities needed to be taught more about chastity. Before the Manifesto, young women had more opportunities to marry and often did so at an earlier age. Now, however, the rising generation tended to marry later, and some, particularly women, did not marry at all. This meant that more young people were expected to remain chaste for longer periods of time.30
Zina Presendia addressed these problems at a joint meeting of the Cardston Ward’s YLMIA and YMMIA in early May. “The pleasures of a moment often bring sorrow for life,” she warned the youth. “We should seek for humility and charity and do to others as we would wish to be done by.”31
That spring and summer, she also attended several meetings of the Cardston Ward YLMIA. The association met every Wednesday afternoon. Mamie Ibey, the twenty-three-year-old president of the ward association, often conducted the meetings while others taught lessons. Every other month, the young women also held a testimony meeting, giving each member of the group a chance to bear witness to her peers.32
All through the year 1900, the Young Woman’s Journal published a twelve-part series of lessons called “Ethics for Young Girls.” Every month a new lesson appeared, each designed to help young women discern right from wrong. Among the topics covered were honesty, self-control, courage, chastity, and reverence. A series of questions followed each lesson, prompting the young women to review and discuss the material.33
Zina Presendia believed regularly attending the MIA could shore up the youth and influence their actions for the better. At the meetings, the young women were encouraged to stand apart from worldliness and error. “We should never be ashamed of the truth,” Zina Presendia taught them, “nor to own that we are Mormons.”34
She also urged their parents to guide them along the path of righteousness. Earlier that year, while visiting a stake in Idaho, she heard her mother repeat something Joseph Smith had taught the Relief Society in Nauvoo: “Plant good ideas into the minds of the children. They notice our example.” Zina Presendia believed this truth applied in Cardston as well.
“We should set good examples for our children,” she reminded other leaders in July, “take them to our arms and our heart, and teach them to shun all evil.”35
On the afternoon of December 10, 1900, George Q. Cannon saw the Hawaiian Islands for the first time since his mission there in the 1850s. At age twenty-three, he had been the youngest of the ten original Latter-day Saint missionaries sent to the islands. Now, as a counselor in the First Presidency, he was returning to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of their arrival and the beginning of the Church in Hawaii.36
A few hours after spotting the islands, George and his fellow passengers docked at Honolulu on the island of Oahu. He stayed the night with Hawaiian Latter-day Saints Abraham and Minerva Fernandez and spent the following day at a reception with about a thousand Saints at a meetinghouse. Some in attendance had been baptized by George during his mission. Others were the children and grandchildren of people he had taught.37
George awoke the next morning, December 12, uneasy about speaking to the Hawaiians at the anniversary celebration. As a young missionary, he had been admired for his skill in speaking and writing Hawaiian. But he had seldom used it since coming home, and now he worried that his clumsiness with the language would disappoint the Saints.38
The celebration was held in a brand-new theater in Honolulu. Local Church leaders had recruited a fine orchestra, two choirs from Honolulu and Laie, and other musical groups. At a nearby government building, the Saints had also prepared an enormous feast of Hawaiian dishes and invited everyone in the community to come. To George, it seemed the entire city was joining in the celebration.39
When the time came for George to speak, he began his talk in English, recalling the earliest days of his mission, when several of his companions abandoned the work and the islands’ English-speaking inhabitants showed no interest in the gospel. “It was then that I protested,” George recounted, “and declared myself determined to stay in these islands and labor among its people.”40
As he spoke, George felt the Spirit rest powerfully upon him. Hawaiian words suddenly came back to him, and his uneasiness slipped away as he began speaking in the language. The Hawaiian Saints were at once astonished and delighted. “How wonderful,” someone said, “that he should remember our language all these long years!”41
The celebration continued into the next day, and George once again addressed the Saints confidently in their language. “I feel today more than ever the ties that bind the people of God together,” he told them. “Where people come to believe in the gospel and go down into the waters of baptism, they grow to love one another.”42
George spent a little more than three weeks with the Saints in Hawaii. While on the island of Maui, he visited the town of Wailuku, where he had his first success as a missionary. The town had changed almost beyond recognition, but he easily found the home of his friends Jonathan and Kitty Napela, both of whom had passed away decades earlier. The Napelas were like family to George, and Jonathan had been his fellow translator of the Hawaiian Book of Mormon.43
As he visited the islands, George made many new friends, including Tomizo Katsunuma, a Japanese man who had joined the Church while studying at the Agricultural College of Utah. He also met lifelong Saints who, despite their faithfulness, had never received the ordinances of the temple. Touched by their situation, he urged them to live worthy to enter the temple and exercise faith that the Lord would inspire His prophet to bring temple blessings to them.44
On the day of George’s departure, hundreds of Saints and a local band met his carriage at the wharf in Honolulu. As a final gesture of their love, some twenty children and elderly Saints rushed forward and covered him in colorful lei. He then climbed aboard his ship, and the band struck up a farewell tune.
Gazing back at the Saints on the dock, George knew he would never forget them. “Aloha nui,” they called out to him, expressing their love and farewell. “Aloha nui.”45
“A new century dawns upon the world today.”
The voice of LeRoi Snow echoed throughout the Salt Lake Tabernacle as he read the opening words of a message his father, Lorenzo Snow, had written to the nations of the earth.46
It was January 1, 1901, the first day of the twentieth century. The weather outside was bitterly cold, but more than four thousand people had left the warmth of their homes that morning to commemorate the occasion in a special service with the prophet, other general authorities, and the Tabernacle Choir. The Tabernacle itself was decorated for the occasion, and strung across the organ pipes was a cluster of electric lights spelling the word “Welcome.”47
Sitting on the stand, not far from where LeRoi stood, was President Snow himself, his voice ravaged by a severe cold. With the other Saints in the room, he listened keenly as LeRoi read the message. Simply titled “Greeting to the World,” it reflected on the astounding scientific discoveries and technological advancements of the last hundred years and expressed President Snow’s optimism for the coming century.
In the message, he called upon world leaders to forsake war and seek the “welfare of humanity” instead of the “enrichment of a race or the extension of an empire.” He declared, “The power is in your hands to pave the way for the coming King of Kings, whose dominion will be over all the earth.” He urged them to promote peace, put an end to oppression, and work together to end poverty and uplift the masses.
He also called on rich and poor alike to seek better, more charitable ways of living. “The day of your redemption draweth nigh,” he told the poor. “Be provident when in prosperity.” To the rich, he counseled generosity: “Unlock your vaults, unloose your purses, and embark in enterprises that will give work to the unemployed and relieve the wretchedness that leads to the vice and crime which curse your great cities and that poison the moral atmosphere around you.”
He testified of the Lord and His restored gospel. “He will assuredly accomplish His work,” President Snow declared, “and the twentieth century will mark its advancement.”
Finally, he blessed the people of the world, wherever they might be. “May the sunshine from above smile upon you,” he said. “May the light of truth chase darkness from your souls. May righteousness increase and iniquity diminish as the years of the century roll on. May justice triumph and corruption be stamped out.”
“Let these sentiments, as the voice of the ‘Mormons’ in the mountains of Utah, go forth to the whole world,” he declared, “and let all people know that our wish and our mission are for the blessing and salvation of the entire human race.”48