I'm Reading A Book

I found this video on another blog. I thought it was entertaining considering I am reading a book and so very often I feel this way, ("don't you ever interrupt me when I'm reading a book.")

The last four weeks I have read many books! I am now on the six volume of The Work and the Glory. I can't begin to describe how much more in tune I am with the history of the church and the persecutions of the early saints. I thought I knew quite a lot about the history of the church, but I was wrong. There is so much more and although this is a fictional book, it is a historical novel. After each chapter the facts are sited and you can read more about the facts.

This series really put the history into perspective, and I am not even finished with it! It's like you are there experiencing everything first hand, listening to Joseph the Prophet speak. I just now started a section where plural marriages are put into practice, which is something I really dreaded reading about. But to learn about the difficulty not only the sister had with this revelation, but the brethren as well. How when Brigham Young learned of the revelation he longed to be as a buried man. How Heber Kimball battled and fasted for three days of the matter of taking a second wife. Sister Kimball saw the agony and the shadow that was befalling her husband even though he was forbidden to tell her of the revelation. Sister Kimball went to the Lord and asked that she may better understand what was wrong with her husband, and there she received a vision. She saw the practise of plural marriage and the woman that Heber Kimball was to take as his second wife. That in turn made it easier for her and Brother Kimball to accept the new principle.

Mary Fielding Smith was also deeply trouble by this. Especially when Brother Joseph asked Hyrum to marry Mary's sister. Brother Joseph Smith then revealed to them that Mercy's (that's Mary's sister) husband had came to him in a vision asking for Joseph to ask Hyrum to take care of his surviving wife, for time only. And that all children born to the union would come unto Mercy and her first husband in the millennium.

This is just what I have been reading of late. But I loved the third book as well. It talked much about Haun's Mill and the persecutions in Missouri. (I won't lie, the first book and half of the second were hard to push through, but it was all worth it!)

Here are some wonderful things that I wrote down for the previous books:

"If it weren't for the Lord, I wouldn't be here...You ask what you will, and I shall give you the best that I have." - Fictional character, Benjamin Steed. The Work and the Glory: A Season of Joy.

"If a man does not properly love and cherish his wife in this life and take care of her, he will not be privileged to have her in the next." - Joseph Smith. The Work and the Glory: A Season of Joy.

"Happiness is the object and design of our existence." - Joseph Smith. The Work and the Glory: Praise to the Man.

"God never has, nor will he ever institute an ordinance or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote the happiness which he has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to his children." - Joseph smith. The Work and the Glory: Praise to the Man.

I wish I would have written more from the first four books, but it didn't dawn on me until I got into the fifth book.

I feel so blessed that I was moved to pick up these books. When ever I get frustrated because of the little things in life I think about the struggles of the early saints. How easy we have it now, yet how hard it can be. It may sound strange, but because of these books I have a stronger desire to become a better wife and friend to my husband. I want to have a relationship so strong and binding that if the Lord came to him and asked him to leave his little family to go and preach the gospel with nothing but a few dollars in his pocket I could support him in that. I can't imagine any greater test than sharing that which I treasure most, my husband. It is easy to feel disgusted when you think of a plural marriage, but when you think of the selflessness of Vilate Kimball and Mary Fielding Smith, you can't help but be in awe of the women they were! Because of theirs and other early saint sisters, the widows and orphans were taken care of, loved and cared for. Not saying that I would be okay with sharing my husband, but I don't think it would hurt me to strive to become selfless like these women were.

When I think of the early saints I think, what faith and endurance, what love and compassion. Without them, where would the church be now?