Steadfast and Immovable

To my son,

                This week we learned about the commandment of the Lord for the Saints to gather to Ohio in 1831. The Saints were there for about seven years, and during that time thousands gathered together. One of those highlighted by the Come, Follow Me manual is Phebe Carter, a young woman who left her family when she was 27 years old and traveled to Ohio alone to join the Saints. She wrote to her mother, who opposed her departure, “Mother, I believe it is the will of God for me to go to the west and I have been convinced that it has been for a long time. Now the way has opened … ; I believe that it is the spirit of the Lord that has done it which is sufficient for all things. O be not anxious for your child; the Lord will comfort me. I believe that the Lord will take care of me and give me that which is for the best. … I go because my Master calls—he has made my duty plain.” She married Wilford Woodruff in Kirtland who would later become the 4^th president of the Church. What is incredible to me is her faith despite the endless trials she faced during her life. They had nine children, but five of those died when they were young. She had her second child, Wilford Jr., while Wilford was away on a mission, and four months later her oldest child, Sarah Emma, died at the age of two in 1840. Her husband was still away and so she suffered through this experience without him. Yet she still wrote, “I feel reconciled to [God’s] will in these things.”

                Six years later Phebe was on the trail with her family seeking to go west with the Saints. Likely due to the difficult circumstances of the journey, their son Joseph took ill. He was only one year old, and Wilford wrote these sad words in his journal on November 12, 1846: “We found our little boy A coffin JOSEPH was failing and could not possibly hold out longer evry exhertion had been made to make him comforrable And if possible to restore him to health but it seemed that He must go He continued to fail through the day and night Sister Abbot took the main charge of him during the night as Mrs Woodruff strength was mostly exhausted. He had suffered much from convulsions during his sickness but He breathed his last and fell asleep this morning 15 minuts before 6 oclok And we took his remains to the grave at 4 oclok in the afternoon. we truly felt that we were called to make a great sacrifice in the loss of our son Joseph.” But that wasn’t the end of their sorrows on the trail. Phebe gave birth to another son less than one month later on December 8, 1846. He died only two days later. Towards the end of the next year, she gave birth to a daughter named Shuah, but she only lived about nine months and also passed away. Seven years later, after they were settled in the Salt Lake Valley, she lost one more son Aphek the same day he was born. She also suffered because of the challenge of plural marriage, a principle which she was at first repulsed by until she “wrestled with [her] Heavenly Father in fervent prayer.” She wrote, “The answer came. Peace was given to my mind. I knew it was the will of God.” Many years later when the government was threatening action against the Saints because of this practice, she boldly declared, “If the rulers of the nation will so far depart from the spirit and letter of our glorious Constitution as to deprive our prophets, apostles and elders of citizenship, and imprison them for obeying this law [of plural marriage], let them grant this, our last request, to make their prisons large enough to hold their wives, for where they go we will go also.” She was always ready to follow the prophet and obey the voice of the Lord through him. She served faithfully in various responsibilities in the Relief Society, and when she died the trials were still all around her. She had fallen and had a serious head injury, from which she passed away at 78. At that time Wilford was in hiding because of the risk of being arrested for plural marriage, and he was not even able to attend her funeral. He wrote, “I was not permitted to attend her funeral without being arrested for my religion, and imprisoned . . . I saw the procession as it passed the office, I saw the hearse that carried my wife . . . to the grave. . . . Persecution is raging against the Latter Day Saints. I am perfectly willing for my wife to lie down and go to sleep and be freed from any of the persecution from the wicked. I hope I may prove true and faithful unto the end that I may meet with her and our friends in the Celestial Kingdom of God.”

It is remarkable that despite all of these trials, both Phebe and Wilford stayed true to their faith in Jesus Christ and in the restoration of His gospel. Theirs is a powerful example for us in our day, and I believe their lives exemplify these words of King Benjamin: “Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all” (Mosiah 5:15). They were indeed steadfast and immovable, and surely the Lord did bring them to heaven and seal them His because of their faith. I hope that you and I can likewise strive to be true to the Lord no matter what happens to us in our lives.  

Love,

Dad