Remember the Pioneers

Above you can see freshly laundered clothing drying on the rocks in the mountains above Jarabacoa. The plant that you can see in the foreground on the left was called a caster bean by my Dad. He found one in the wash near our home and dug it up and brought it home and planted it in front of the bedroom at the front of the house on Willard Street. I remember my mother looked it up and found out that the seeds and pods were poisonous. Dad didn't think any of us kids would eat them and so it stayed until Dad brought home a manzanita plant with shiny red branches from the desert. Last I remember a lemon tree planted there. (Siblings, do I have that right?)

In Sacrament Meeting today, a young man who just blessed his new baby girl (Sarah Lydia) last Fast Sunday spoke about service. He used the pioneers who crossed the plains in covered wagons as an example of those who never quit and devoted all they had to the cause they believed in. I was a little surprised that he identified with the pioneers more than 150 years ago in the United States.

But it is easy for me to identify with them because of my heritage. I wanted to share part of the story told about my ancestors by Elder M. Russell Ballard. We are not related to him but his great grandmother is my direct ancestor.

This is taken from what he said last May in a single adult conference. He read from the journals of his great-grandparents Henry and Margaret McNeil Ballard. He read how after joining the Church in England at age 17, Henry Ballard made his way to Utah. But upon arriving at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, he was ashamed to enter the Salt Lake Valley in his ragged clothes that didn't cover his body. So he waited until dark to approach a nearby house and beg for clothes. His plea was answered and he was able to enter the valley the next day, thankful to the Lord that he reached his future home in safety.

That's the beginning of the Ballard family in Utah. "No one, I think," said Elder Ballard, "came into this valley any humbler or in more challenging circumstances.

Margaret McNeil joined the Church with her family in Scotland. She wrote in her journal of a time when she was a 10 year old girl and her family was hungry and without food. In front of a small home across a field was a pile of squash, and her mother sent her to beg for some squash for the family to eat. She wrote that the woman who answered the door said, "I knew you were coming. I have been told to give you food." She gave Margaret a fresh loaf of bread and later delivered a cooked meal to the family.

A Dominican Republic pile of squash, the tayota. These must have fallen off of a truck a few days ago. Below is a photo of one squash on the huge vines grown on wires to keep them up off of the ground. They don't taste bad--they don't have much flavor at all.

Elder Ballard said, "So when we talk about hardship or we talk about challenges, or we talk about where we are in our individual lives as we are working our way through this process of mortality, I personally take a great deal of strength from thinking of those that have gone before us and the price that they were willing to pay to establish the Church."

He reminded us that whatever challenges we face "Do not forget who you are. You are sons and daughters of God, our Eternal Father, and He loves you. You can lay any burden that you feel like you are carrying on the shoulders of the Lord Jesus Christ as you internalize the Atonement and let that be real in your lives. Remember what He did in Gethsemane and what He did on Golgotha for you and for me. Then, somehow, some way, the power of heaven gives you the strength to carry on, do the best you can, to move forward, and not to be too concerned about your own personal worries."


We live in such a beautiful world. The pioneers didn't have an ocean to enjoy. Below is the beach at Las Terrenas on the Samaná peninsula.
They did have mountain streams like the one below but impatience (the pink flowers) do not grow wild in Utah.
We love you all,
Be good. We are all pioneers in our own lives. Make it one you will be proud of.
Love, Mom/Jeri/Grandma