Sunday, January 22, 2017 – Brigham Young Home, District Meeting & Dinner

Today was a fast paced, fully loaded day of meetings and assignments. We started at 7:20am and didn’t finish until 8:30pm. The day began with my assignment to help set up and prepare the sacrament table. Sis. Johnson and I had to leave 20 minutes early for church to do that. After our block of meetings Sis. Johnson & I had overlapping appointments. First with President Hall to have our Temple recommends renewed, and the other was to meet with our Rendezvous director, Sis. Lowe.

Sis Lowe called a special meeting with all of the couples from all three casts that play George & Agatha and Peter & Abigail plus the Editor’s roll, about 18 to 20 people. There are some scene layout and blocking changes that apply to us all. Sis. Lowe wanted to get us all together so we would all be on board all at the same time.  Sis. Lowe really knows her business. I think these changes will improve the show a lot.

Next we had to hurry back home to change into our “Site Clothes”, pack a quick lunch and be to our Sunday afternoon site assignment. Today we were assigned to give tours in the “Brigham Young Home” in Historic Nauvoo. 

As I’ve studied Brigham Young’s life I learned that Brigham shared his conviction of Joseph Smith’s prophetic call with thousands even when his own life was threatened. He said, “Apostates . . . threatened to destroy me because I would proclaim, publicly and privately, that I knew by the power of the Holy Ghost, that Joseph Smith was the Prophet of the Most High God.”

Following his baptism in April of 1832, Brigham Young journeyed from New York to Kirtland, Ohio, to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith. Of their meeting, Brigham said, “My joy was full at the privilege of shaking the hand of the Prophet of God, and receiving the sure testimony, by the spirit of prophecy, that he was all that any man could believe him to be as a true Prophet.”

As I have studied and learned about the Brigham Young home it is one of the very special sites in Old Nauvoo. Brigham Young and his family only lived in the home for a few years before their forced exodus. One room in particular is of interest to me because of what the room was used for.

 

For two and a half years after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom until the Saints were forced to leave Nauvoo, Brigham Young was the leader the church as the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Brigham had his office in a room on to the east side of his residence. It was in this room that the plans were laid out with the other members of the Quorum of the Twelve to finish construction of the Temple; where they coordinated the arrival of tens of thousands of new converts from around the world and where they planned the monumental task to take the Saints west to the Rocky Mountains.

Today as I walked on that squeaky wooden plank floor I could imagine those planks made that same squeaky noise back then as Prophets of God like Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Heber C Kimball and Lorenzo Snow walked on them and deliberated about the future of the saints one hundred and seventy three years ago. 

Tonight we had our monthly District Meeting and dinner. This time Sis. Johnson and I hosted the meeting at our home. There are five couples in our district and we had plenty of room to accommodate everyone. It was a good dinner and a very good meeting with good company and good friends.