Names on the wall, members of the Hunt Wagon Train. Names in white are those who arrived in the Valley. Names in yellow are of those who died on the journey.
The Family and Spouses
The Sweetwater River
One of the monuments to the young men who carried pioneers across the Sweetwater in the snow and windy weather.
Martin's Cove - the pioneers were taken here while they waited to leave for the final push to the valley. The sand hill in front provided some shelter from the elements.
As I read the Ensign today, I thought of the experience I had on the way to the family reunion. Ben, Marilyn, and I stopped at Martin's Cove. I have felt a great desire to walk that area where our ancestor, Hans Ulrich Bryner and family walked in the snow with the Hunt Wagon Train. In the Ensign, I found an article which discusses that very event. "On the Saturday before general conference on October 1856, Elder Franklin D. Richards and a handful of returning missionaries arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. They reported to President Brigham Young that hundreds of pioneer men, women, and children were scattered over the long trail to the valley, facing the early onset of winter. The people were hungrey, and many carts and wagons were breaking down. People and animals were dying. all of them would perish unless they were rescued...In his [Brigham Young's] address, he said: That is my religion, that is the dictaion of the Holy Ghost that I possess. It is to save the people...I will tell you that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the Celestial Kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains." In the midst of snow and wind, those rescuers sought out and brought in the pioneers still on the Wyoming plains. What a wonderful experience it was to walk where they walked, to feel the spirit that exists there, to see the hills they saw, now barren of snow, but windy still.
Though times have changed and the journey from Europe to the Salt Lake Valley is but a long day's flight, the truth of Brigham Young's statement has not changed. "Remember in all things the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted, for he that doeth not these things, the same is not my disciple. (D&C 52:40) We are commanded, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Matt. 22:39).
I challenge each of you to do something for someone this week - something you don't have to do. Visit someone, send a letter, bake a treat, provide a meal, call someone, do something to show your willingness to be His follower.
Love, Mom
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