Chapter 33
Our Father’s Hand
When thirty-six-year-old Martha Toronto headed into town to shop for her family and the half dozen or more missionaries living in the Czechoslovak Mission home, she sometimes felt like she was being watched. In the spring of 1948, she had been living in Prague with her husband, mission president Wallace Toronto, for about a year. During her first six months in the city, Martha had worked hard to help the Czechoslovak Saints rebuild the Church in a country still reeling from seven years of Nazi occupation. Then, in February 1948, Soviet-backed communists in the government had staged a coup, forcing all noncommunist leaders out of power.
The coup was part of an emerging “cold war” between the Soviet Union and its former allies. The communist government in Czechoslovakia was generally suspicious of religious groups, and the Church had come under special scrutiny because of its ties to the United States. Government spies and citizen informants now monitored Church members and missionaries, and many Czechoslovaks seemed wary of the Torontos and other Americans. Martha would occasionally see a curtain in a nearby house flick open as she walked by. And once, a man had followed her thirteen-year-old daughter, Marion, home from school. When she turned to look at him, he hid behind a tree.1
Martha had experience living under a suspicious and controlling regime. She and Wallace had led the Czechoslovak Mission once before, beginning in 1936, a few years after they were married. At first, the Torontos had been relatively free to preach the gospel. But by early 1939, the Nazi regime had seized control of the country and began harassing Church members and imprisoning some missionaries. When the war broke out a short time later, Martha, Wallace, and the North American missionaries were forced to evacuate the country, leaving behind more than a hundred Czechoslovak Saints.2
Wallace had placed the mission in the hands of twenty-one-year-old Josef Roubíček, who had joined the Church only three years earlier. As acting mission president, Josef held meetings and conferences, sent frequent letters to the Saints in the mission, and did what he could to strengthen their resilience and faith. From time to time, he reported to Wallace on the state of the mission.3
Not long after the war’s end, the First Presidency called Wallace and Martha to resume their duties in Czechoslovakia. Given the challenges of living in war-torn Europe, Wallace left for Prague in June 1946, promising to send for the family as soon as things were more stable. At times, Martha had wondered if her children would be better off if she remained with them in Utah, but she did not want them to go years without seeing their father. After a year-long separation, the Toronto family had finally reunited.4
As a mission leader, Martha directed Relief Society work, took care of the missionaries, and enjoyed seeing recent converts gather in the mission home for Mutual Improvement Association activities each week. But with the communist government keeping a close eye on her family and the Church, she had every reason to expect that life in Czechoslovakia would become more difficult.
Before Martha left the United States, President J. Reuben Clark of the First Presidency had set her apart for her mission. “The problems that will come to you,” he had said, “will be numerous and of an unusual kind.” He promised she would have the strength to meet them and blessed her with patience, charity, and long-suffering.5
Martha clung to his words as she and her family did the Lord’s work.
Meanwhile, far from the turmoil in Europe, thirty-one-year-old John O’Donnal knelt beside a tree in a secluded corner of a botanical garden near Tela, Honduras. For the last six years, John had been operating a rubber station in the neighboring country of Guatemala, and he enjoyed it whenever his work brought him to the beautiful garden. For someone who had grown up in the Latter-day Saint colonies in the desert lands of northern Mexico, the peaceful spot, with its extraordinary array of flora and fauna, was a tropical paradise.6
Yet John’s mind was troubled. He and his wife, Carmen, had fallen in love shortly after he started working in Central America. Since Carmen was a Catholic, they were married by a priest of her church. At the time, though, John had a strong feeling that she would one day share his faith in the restored gospel. He longed to be sealed to her in the temple and often talked with her about the Church, which had no official presence in Guatemala. Carmen did not seem interested in changing her religion, however, and John tried hard not to pressure her.
“I don’t want you to join my church just because you want to please me,” he told her. “You have to work for your testimony.”
Carmen liked much of what John taught her about the Church, but she wanted to be sure the restored gospel was right for her. She had not been allowed to read the Bible as a child, and she did not grasp the importance of the Book of Mormon at first. “Why in the world do I have to read this book?” she asked John. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”7
John did not give up. On a trip to the United States, he talked to her about eternal marriage as they visited Mesa, Arizona, where the nearest temple was located. No matter how much he shared the restored gospel with her, though, she could not seem to receive a testimony.
Part of the problem, John knew, was opposition from her family and friends, some of whom spoke poorly of the Church. Carmen was not a devout Catholic, but she still valued the traditions she had grown up with. And John regretted that he himself was sometimes slack in living his religion, especially around friends and colleagues who were not members of the Church. It was sometimes a struggle to be so far from any organized branch of Saints. He was grateful for his early years in northern Mexico, where he had been surrounded by the good examples of his parents and other Church members.8
In late 1946, John had visited President George Albert Smith in Salt Lake City and urged him to send missionaries to Guatemala. President Smith listened with interest as John spoke of the country’s readiness for the gospel. He and his counselors were already consulting with Frederick S. Williams, the former president of the Argentine Mission, about expanding missionary work in Latin America.
Not long after the meeting, the First Presidency had announced their decision to send missionaries to Guatemala. “We are not sure as to when this can be done,” they told John, “but we trust in the reasonably near future.”9
Four missionaries had arrived at the O’Donnals’ home in Guatemala City several months later, just after the borders of the Mexican Mission were enlarged to include Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Two of the elders moved on to Costa Rica, but the other two began holding meetings with John, Carmen, and their two small daughters.
The missionaries also set up a Sunday School and Primary—and even recruited Carmen’s sister Teresa as a Primary teacher. Though Carmen attended Church meetings with John, she was still reluctant to get baptized. In fact, by the time John knelt down in the botanical garden, the missionaries had been in Guatemala for nearly a year, and so far no one in the country had joined the Church.
As John prayed, he opened his soul, pleading with Heavenly Father to forgive his sins and shortcomings. He then prayed for Carmen in her struggle to gain a testimony. It seemed as if the adversary had done all he could over the last five years to keep her out of the Church. When would she receive her answer from the Lord?10
While John O’Donnal prayed in Honduras, Emmy Cziep was working hard as a missionary in Switzerland. In addition to regular missionary duties, she assisted mission president Scott Taggart with his German-language correspondence and translated lesson materials from English to German. Although she did not know English before her mission, she had developed skill in the language by poring over old Improvement Era magazines and carrying a dictionary wherever she went.11
In the summer of 1948, a government official informed Emmy that she could no longer renew her visa and would have to return to Vienna in three months. Emmy missed her family, but she had little desire to live in Austria under the influence of the Soviet Union, which still occupied parts of her city and her country. There was a chance she could get a temporary job as a domestic worker in Great Britain, but nothing was certain. She thought often of the proverb “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”12
One day, Emmy met two sister missionaries from the British Mission who were visiting Switzerland before returning home. Both women were from Canada and did not speak German, so Emmy interpreted for them. As they chatted, Emmy told them of her reluctance to return to Vienna. One of the missionaries, Marion Allen, asked Emmy if she would be willing to emigrate to Canada instead of Great Britain. While most Church members in Canada lived near the temple in Cardston, Alberta, branches of Saints could be found across the vast country, from Nova Scotia in the east to British Columbia in the west.
Emmy thought she had little chance of emigrating to North America. Austria had not yet signed a neutrality treaty, and its citizens were considered enemy aliens to Allied nations. Nor did Emmy have any family or friends in Canada or the United States who could sponsor her or guarantee her employment.13
A few weeks later, though, President Taggart received a telegram from Marion’s father, Heber Allen, asking if Emmy would be interested in moving to Canada. Marion had told him of Emmy’s plight, and Heber had reached out to a contact in the Canadian government who could help her get approved for immigration. Heber was willing to offer Emmy a job and a place to stay at their home in Raymond, a small town near Cardston.
Emmy immediately agreed. As she prepared to leave, her parents, Alois and Hermine, got a one-day pass to the Swiss border to say goodbye. Emmy knew it took faith for her parents to let their twenty-year-old daughter live among strangers in an unknown land, not knowing if they would see each other again.
“Wherever you are going, you are never alone,” her parents told her. “There is your Heavenly Father to watch over you.” They urged her to be a good citizen and stay close to the Church.14
Later, during her voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, Emmy’s heart grew heavy as she thought of her close-knit family, the members of the Vienna Branch, and her beloved Austria. She began to weep, thinking that if she had the power to turn the ship around, she just might do it.
Two returning elders from the Czechoslovak Mission were sailing with Emmy, and they made the difficult trip more bearable. In between bouts of seasickness, each young man proposed marriage to Emmy, but she turned both of them down. “You just haven’t been around girls for two years,” she told them. “As soon as you get home, you’ll find a real nice one and settle down.”15
When the ship arrived in Nova Scotia, the two elders were allowed immediate entrance to the country, but Emmy was ushered to a fenced-in holding area with scores of other emigrants. Some of them, Emmy learned, were orphaned children from German concentration camps.
The Nazis had begun using such camps in the 1930s to imprison political dissidents and anyone else they deemed inferior or dangerous to their regime. After the war started, the Nazis continued to apprehend these people, ultimately murdering hundreds of thousands of them. Nazi anti-Semitism also turned genocidal as the regime systematically imprisoned and murdered millions of Jews in concentration camps. Two-thirds of European Jews died in the Holocaust, including Olga and Egon Weiss, the Jewish-born mother and son who had joined the Church and worshipped with Emmy’s family in the Vienna Branch.16
In Canada, Emmy waited an entire day while government officials placed her and other emigrants into language groups and then questioned them, one by one. Knowing some emigrants were sent back to Europe because their papers were not in order, or because they did not have enough money, or simply because they were ill, Emmy prayed that she could pass the inspection. When the official took her passport and stamped it, her heart almost leaped out of her chest for joy.
“I am free, in a free country,” she thought.17
Around this same time, in Guatemala City, Carmen O’Donnal had much to think about. She had just received a letter from her husband, John, who was in Honduras on business. While he was away, he wanted her to ask God if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was true, if Joseph Smith was a prophet, and if the Book of Mormon was the word of God. “Pray about it,” he pleaded. “I want my wife to be sealed to me for the eternities, and my children too.”
Carmen had already prayed about these things many times before. And praying was especially difficult—even upsetting—when John was away from home. A terrible spirit would surround her, and she would experience alarming displays of Satan’s power. The thought of making another attempt without him nearby frightened her.
Still, one night she decided to try again. She put her two daughters to bed and then knelt to pray in her bedroom. Immediately the powers of darkness returned. She felt as if the room were full of thousands of jeering faces who wanted to destroy her. She fled the room and climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the missionaries lived. She told the elders what had happened, and they gave her a blessing.
When Carmen opened her eyes, she felt calmer. “For some reason, Satan is trying to destroy me,” she realized. The adversary clearly did not want her to gain a testimony of the restored gospel. Why else would he work so hard to disrupt her prayers? All at once, she knew she had to be baptized.18
The next few months were busy for the O’Donnals. After John returned from Honduras, he and Carmen always prayed together. She continued to attend sacrament meetings and other Church gatherings, gaining greater understanding of the gospel. At a testimony meeting with Arwell Pierce, the president of the Mexican Mission, she stood up and said a few words. Others in turn shared their testimonies, and they wept together as the Holy Ghost touched and inspired them.19
On November 13, 1948, the missionaries held a baptismal service for Carmen, her sister Teresa, and two others, Manuela Cáceres and Luis Gonzalez Batres. Since the rented hall where they held church had no font, some friends agreed to let John and the missionaries perform the baptisms in a small swimming pool south of the city.20
One week later, Mary White and Arlene Bean, two missionaries from the Mexican Mission, arrived to organize a Relief Society in Guatemala City. Carmen was called to be the Relief Society president, and she and the missionaries held meetings on Thursday afternoons. Most of the women who came were not members of the Church. One, a middle-aged university professor, was bothered at first that someone as young as Carmen was leading the society.
“I don’t know why in the world you called this young lady to be president,” she told the missionaries.
Carmen felt bad. She could not help agreeing with the woman. Why hadn’t the professor or another older woman been called as president?
“Well, you don’t have to feel like that, because you didn’t ask for this job,” the sister missionaries told her. “You were the one called to do it.”
Since the Relief Society had no manuals, Carmen improvised lessons and activities. In February 1949, two women, Antonia Morales and Alicia Cáceres, joined the Church. A few weeks later, Carmen called them and Gracie de Urquizú, a woman interested in the Church, as members of her presidency. The women were presented at a meeting with twenty-one sisters—their best-attended meeting yet.
Everyone there was happy and ready to learn.21
In the spring of 1949, President George Albert Smith often woke to the sound of barking seals and the rhythmic churn of the Pacific Ocean. The prophet had come to California in January to inspect the Los Angeles Temple site. The war and relief efforts in Europe had delayed the project, and Church leaders now wanted to move forward with construction. After a few busy days of meetings, President Smith had begun to feel ill. His condition worsened, and doctors diagnosed a blood clot in his right temple.22
The condition proved not to be life-threatening, but President Smith had struggled to regain his strength. When the doctors finally released him from the hospital, he remained in California to recuperate by the sea. With the April 1949 general conference quickly approaching, he was hoping to return to Salt Lake City. But whenever he sat up in bed, a terrible dizziness sent the room spinning, and he had to sink back down into his pillow.23
Aside from the clot, the doctors could find no clear reason for the prophet’s fatigue. “My biggest trouble,” he had recently concluded in his journal, “is tired nerves and overwork.”24
For much of his adult life, President Smith had struggled with health issues like poor eyesight, digestive problems, and terrible fatigue. When he was called as an apostle at age thirty-three, he knew from experience what could happen if he pushed his body too hard. But sometimes his sense of duty and desire to work kept him from slowing down.
By 1909, six years after his call to the apostleship, he was anxious and depressed. He had no energy, and for months at a time he was confined to his bed, unable to do anything. His poor eyesight prevented him from reading for any great length of time. He felt useless and hopeless, and there were times when he wished for death. For three years, he had to step away from his regular duties in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.25
President Smith found that prayer, fresh air, a nutritious diet, and regular exercise helped him regain energy. Although he was still not completely cured of his health challenges, those difficult early years as an apostle convinced him that the Lord had a plan for his life. He found solace in a letter from his father, the apostle John Henry Smith. “The bitter experience through which you are going,” it read, “is but designed for your purification and uplifting and qualification for an extended life work.”26
President Smith had since thrown his energies into alleviating suffering, injustice, and hardship. He arranged for the first printing of the Book of Mormon in braille and organized the first Church branch for the deaf. After learning that Helmuth Hübener, the young German Saint executed by the Nazis, had been wrongly excommunicated from the Church, he and his counselors reversed the action and directed local authorities to note this fact on Helmuth’s membership record. As Church president, he gave new attention to Native Americans in the United States, seeking to improve living conditions and education among them.27
The prophet’s sympathetic heart often added to his emotional burden, though. “When things are normal, my nerves are not very strong,” he once told a friend. “And when I see other people in sorrow and depressed, I am easily affected.”28
Doctors at the time did not understand long-term physical and mental illnesses well, often using terms like “nervous exhaustion” to describe conditions like chronic fatigue or depression. Still, President Smith did his best to manage his health, taking advantage of periods of increased energy and stamina and resting when needed. Although he had never again suffered the kind of collapse he had experienced decades earlier, old age and immense responsibilities were taxing him.29
On March 20, the prophet sent a letter by airmail to his counselors, recommending that they hold general conference without him. President J. Reuben Clark telephoned the next day, hopeful that President Smith would still recover in time for conference. “Let’s wait until next Sunday and see how you are feeling,” he said.
The following week, the prophet suffered bouts of dizziness, but he felt himself slowly gaining strength. On March 27, his doctors agreed that he was healthy enough to travel, so he soon boarded a train bound for Salt Lake City. He rested well during the journey, and when conference weekend came, he knew that the Lord had blessed him with strength.
On the second day of the conference, President Smith stood before the Saints, his heart full of love and appreciation. “Many times when I have been apparently ready to go to the other side,” he said, “I have been kept for some other work to be done.”
He then spoke words he had not planned to say until that moment. “I have had much happiness in life,” he said. “I pray that we may all so adjust ourselves as we pass through life’s experiences that we can reach out and feel that we hold our Father’s hand.”30
Back in Prague, mission president Wallace Toronto waited to hear if seven new American missionaries called to serve in the Czechoslovak Mission would receive permission to enter the country. During the previous year, the number of missionaries in Czechoslovakia had grown to thirty-nine—the second-largest group of U.S. citizens in the country, exceeded only by the staff of the American embassy. Ten of the missionaries were scheduled to return home, however, and they needed to be replaced for the mission to keep up its momentum.31
The group of new missionaries had arrived in Europe in February 1949. Since the Czechoslovak government did not immediately issue them visas, the elders waited at the Swiss-Austrian Mission home in Basel as Wallace petitioned a top government official to let the missionaries enter the country. After weeks of waiting for a decision, Wallace learned that his pleas had been rejected.
“For the time being,” the official response had read, “no more American citizens are to be admitted into Czechoslovakia for the purpose of taking up permanent residency.”
The missionaries were soon reassigned to the Swiss-Austrian Mission, leaving Wallace shorthanded just as the communist government was intruding more and more on Church business. The regime now required all public lessons or sermons to be approved six weeks in advance, and communist officials often attended Church meetings to monitor the Saints for unapproved speech. The government also revoked permission to print the mission magazine, Novy Hlas, and threatened to reduce the Saints’ rations or get them fired from their jobs if they continued attending church. Some felt pressured to spy on their fellow Church members.
Distraught Saints came to Wallace for advice, and he told them they should never feel obligated to put themselves at risk. If government agents pressured them to report on a Church meeting, they should offer just enough information to satisfy the interrogators.32
Despite all these troubles, some Czechoslovaks were still eager to hear the gospel message. Instead of limiting public meetings, Wallace expanded the mission’s reach by holding dozens of lectures in towns across the country. The gatherings became very popular, often resulting in the sale of many copies of the Book of Mormon. One evening, in the city of Plzeň, nearly nine hundred people showed up to listen.
Such successes brought additional government scrutiny, however. In some areas, including Prague, officials denied requests to hold lectures. Not long after the meeting in Plzeň, the government refused to renew residency permits to four American missionaries in the country, alleging that they were “a threat to the public peace, order, and security of the state.”
Wallace again petitioned regime officials, insisting that the missionaries had done nothing to endanger the public. He produced several positive articles about Czechoslovakia from the Deseret News to prove that the Saints were not enemies of the government. He also mentioned the Church’s distribution of food and clothing throughout the country after the war and pointed out that the missionaries were contributing to the Czech economy.33
None of it made any difference. The government ordered the four missionaries to leave the country by May 15, 1949. Wallace wrote in his mission report that he feared all religious movements in Czechoslovakia would soon come under strict state control.
But he refused to give up. “It is our hope and prayer that the Lord will continue to bless His work in this land,” he wrote, “no matter what the political tides of the future may bring.”34