After Much Tribulation

To my daughter, 

                Today is the day that we commemorate the arrival of the pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. 175 years ago today Brigham Young arrived with the first group of Saints after traveling hundreds of miles by wagon across the plains of the United States. As you know, you were named after a pioneer named Lucy Ward who was with the Willie Handcart Company. They traveled to be with the Saints in 1856 and endured great hardship because of the winter weather they passed through. Many died on the trail from freezing and starvation, and eventually they had to stop their travels and wait for help because they didn’t have enough food or energy to continue on. Lucy was among them and suffered these privations with all the rest. But what I hope that you remember from her life is that in the midst of our most difficult challenges the Lord can help us and give us some of our greatest blessings. I think her story shows that. As you may remember, there was a young man named James Cole who, along with many others, came from Salt Lake to help rescue these pioneers who were starving and freezing on the plains in what is today Wyoming. As he traveled to find the suffering Saints, he dreamed that he met a beautiful woman with a fur cap and green veil and that she would become his wife. He was told by William Kimball, another rescuer to whom he related the dream, “You'll see no beautiful women in a green veil in this forlorn outfit." They met up with the Willie company in October 1856, and it was William who saw her first: a girl in a fur cap wrapped in a green veil. In London, England, where she was from, Lucy had been an apprentice to a hat maker and had become very skilled at making hats. She had made the fur cap from a coat to keep her head warm during the journey and still had it on that day that James and the rescuers arrived. They soon met and fell in love and they were married on the trail on November 2, 1856 at Fort Bridger. Despite the terrible hardship the journey was for her, the Lord provided a great compensatory blessing and out of trial came something wonderful. I hope that you will always remember her story and remember this scripture that encapsulates it: “For after much tribulation come the blessings” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:4).

                 I am sure that throughout your life you will face many challenges. You may not ever have to suffer hunger and frostbite and pull a handcart through the snow like Lucy Ward, but surely you will face challenges just as difficult and trying. I hope that as you do you will remember this famous statement from one who endured these things with the handcart pioneers the same year as your ancestor: “We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation….  [Yet] every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives, for we became acquainted with him in our extremities….  The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay.” Sometimes the purpose of our trials is to draw us closer to the Lord and to help us come to know Him. As we choose to have faith in Him we will see His hand bless and strengthen us. When that happens, we can have the same experience as a group of Nephites who suffered “great persecutions” and had to “wade through much affliction.” We read that in the midst of their trials they “did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God” (Helaman 3:35). You can find joy even in your difficulties and as you choose to pray and fast and humble yourself before the Lord, and no matter what your challenges are, your soul too can be filled with joy and consolation.  

Love,

Dad