SHALL WE NOT GO ON IN SO GREAT A CAUSE

IN SO GREAT A CAUSE

Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause! …Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceeding glad … for the prisoners shall go free. Doctrine and Covenants 128:22



No! Not that! Not then!

I had “made the mistake” of showing my wife my itinerary for my week-long Utah trip. She noticed all too readily my discretionary time on Thursday afternoon. She wanted me to do some genealogy research for her. It seems that a 19th century Kansas ancestor had one more child, Sarah, mentioned in a letter somewhere but not accounted for on any official record. My wife wanted me to go to the 4th floor of the BYU library and look in the 1870 census record for Sarah Hutchinson (this was before all those things were online).

“But Ana Maria Matute will be in town.”

“Ana Maria Ma-WHO-te?”(My wife can be quite spontaneously clever at times.)

“She wrote Primeras Memorias, my favorite Spanish novel. It’s through the eyes and vocabulary of a 6 year old, but who has the wisdom of a mature, grounded adult. And the author is still alive! She’ll be lecturing at BYU that afternoon. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an old Spanish major like me!”

“Suit yourself. You’ll just be leaving the children’s third great grandmother waiting even longer for her work to be done.”

“Sarah Hutchinson is a direct ancestor? AHhhhhh!”

. . .

Harmony on the home front eventually trumped giving Ana Maria Matute the opportunity of meeting me in person. I successfully located the 1870 census – Kansas, appropriate county. I found the correct Hutchinson family, but no Sarah. Good! Now I can go to the lecture with a clear conscience.

But wait! Look in the adjoining counties? Now why would I want to do a thing like that?! Just do it? All right, if you insist, but I’ll miss my favorite author.

There she was – an indentured servant, 15 years old, listed with a farm family in a neighboring county. Gradually the pieces of her story, one that I had heard bit by bit over the years, began to come together in my mind. Her father was a ne’er-do-well who had trouble providing for his family. When the Civil War broke out, he left to enlist, promising to send his wages home. He was never heard from again – Civil War records do not show him as an enlistee. A single mother with 5 children in the 1860’s – standing there in the aisle on the fourth floor of the Harold B. Lee library, I felt the agony of Sarah’s mother as she made the decision to send her precious child away to be a domestic, so the youngster would at least have enough to eat.

I handed the copy of the new-found documentation to my wife upon returning home. With misty eyes, I recounted the experience, concluding, “You know I would not have chosen to do this on my own. Poor Sarah, what a miserable childhood she must have had. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to do a little bit to make her eternal life more pleasant.”

. . .

Some time later, our second daughter’s husband had just been in a roll-over accident, had broken his neck, and had been rendered a quadriplegic. We were still reeling with agony, when our bishop asked us to be the presiding authorities on a youth temple trip, 6 hours away in Dallas. We DIDN’T want to do that, given our circumstances. But, trying to be true to our covenants, we girded up our loins and accepted the assignment.

Our fourth daughter Rebekah was about 14 at the time. This was her first temple baptism experience. Her mother had sent some family names with her. Rebekah let it be known that she wanted her dad to baptize her. For some reason unexplainable to me now, I had not planned to do any baptisms that day, but to do other, less strenuous priesthood tasks. We shuffled assignments, and I entered the font with my beloved daughter. Imagine my elation when I read the first name on the screen: Sarah Elizabeth Hutchinson.

. . .

Back at the Dallas temple a few years later, my wife talked me into doing sealings rather than a customary endowment. Kneeling at the altar with the love of my life, my ears perked up when I heard that she was right then acting as proxy for Sarah Elizabeth Hutchinson., and myself for Sarah’s husband.