Death on the trek.

On the 24th of July we celebrate the arrival of the pioneers into the Salt Lake valley. This is a time when we remember those who came across the plains to Utah seeking Zion. 

Most of our ancestors made the trek safely.  There were some who died along the way. 

The first to go was Sarah Watson Crane. Her husband Salmon Gee died in Iowa and is buried in Nauvoo. The widow Gee left Nauvoo and traveled to Council Bluffs where she contracted cholera and died, as did many of the saints including a number of the members of Zion's camp on an earlier trek. 

Later Amanda Melvina Sagers and her husband Lysander Gee were driven from Nauvoo to St. Louis, where she died, leaving her son Orlando Lysander to be raised by his stepmother Theresa Bowley Gee. Although we do not know the cause of her death, there was at that time an epidemic of cholera in St. Louis. 

Mary Ann Wingrove was traveling with her husband and nine year-old son in a wagon train. She got out of the wagon to get Isaac a drink of water and caught her skirt on the brake lever and fell under the wagon wheel crushing her skull. Prior to this time she had lost two other children. 

We do not now have to cross the plains to come to Zion. There is a greater danger of losing our spiritual life now than it was for our ancestors to lose their physical life. 

We, like they, are on a trek. Ours is a trek through life. We have, like they, obstacles in our path. We have our rocky ridges to climb and our rivers to ford. We may plod along as it were by foot along the trail of life or pull our handcart of baggage or perhaps be fortunate enough to travel in a covered wagon, but we  face a different and more challenging environment. 

Cholera was a known and well-recognized disease in those days, but the cause was not known. It is caused by a microscopic bacteria usually transmitted in water. It causes profuse watery diarrhea. The body looses essential electrolytes and this then interferes with the electrical conduction of the heart and it stops beating effectively. Death is rapid. 

We don't have cholera here in the United States because we do not drink contaminated water. Yet there is a spiritual cholera all around us contaminating not what we drink, but the media we consume. It is just as insidious as the bacteria cholera vibrio. It, like the real bacteria, can cause spiritual diarrhea sapping our strength and if not checked can cause the heart of the spirit to stop and we become spiritually dead.  

We need to sanitize or purify what we take into our minds, just as we purify the water that we drink and pasteurized the milk we use and wash or cook the food we eat.  We do not want to get physically ill and it is important as well to maintain our spiritual health.

In this trek through life we will encounter things that will cause us to stumble or catch us off balance.  We do not want to be like Mary Ann Wingrove Price and fall under the wheel of a wagon and have our head run over.  Things that upset our spiritual balance and cause us to stumble may crush our head, destroy our reason and also lead to a quick spiritual death.  Do not go on the Internet to find answers to your questions about the church.  It will only cause you to stumble.  Grandpa and Grandma have been over the trail before you.  We can answer the great majority of your questions. We have taught your parents and they are grounded and rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ and are firm in the understanding of the operation of the true church. 

At this time of remembering the pioneers, let us prove ourselves worthy to come to Zion and make them as proud of us as we should be proud and honor them.

Love,

Grandpa