Martin-Willie Handcart Immigrants

[snowcat]

Wait, are we talking about your posts here or the handcart experience?

[Pheidippides]

My parents ward in Farmington is very similar. My ward in Farmington, three stakes over, was about 40%.

Cumorah.com has wonderful stats on a country by country basis. It is run by active LDS people and is a just the facts ma'am sort of place. It was down a while ago. Anyway, 40% is normal in the US IIRC

[taekwondave]

Brigham Young disagrees with you. In a letter to Orson Pratt, he said, "The immigration is too late. This is an evil that must be remedied in future."

Also, from http://nsltrek2014.com/willie-and-martin-overview/

"Shortly after, President Young instructed emigration authorities that, in the future, they were never to allow saints to leave Florence for Salt Lake later than August 1 and if they did, they would be excommunicated. He described a late immigration as an “evil” because, not only did it risk the lives of the travelers, but it put a burdensome task upon the saints in Salt Lake to resupply them with food which sometimes was scarce in the valley."

.....

Leaders of the handcart companies prophesied that they knew God would protect them. Obviously a false prophesy. If I were to ever claim such divine knowledge that could affect the well-being of those under my care, I had better be darn certain that God really was talking to me.

What would would everybody say if I knowingly left my young child locked in a hot car on a sweltering day and he died. Would you call that evil? What if I had unshakeable faith that God would send a cloud to cool the temperature where the car was parked. Would that change your opinion?

I'm not sure Brigham disagrees with me. In hindsight he says it was a mistake, and he acknowledges that to carry it on in the future would certainly be an evil, yes. And although he threatens excommunication to those who might dare to do so moving forward, I don't see where he meted out such a penalty to those who actually did it (or did he? or did all these evil leaders die with the company on the trail--honestly I don't know).

As for it being a false prophecy, I don't know if you and I have the same idea of what it means to prophesy. Must one hear from God first in order to prophesy or does it work more like God said to Nephi "you will not ask that which is contrary to my will"? I do not believe in God, personally. Thus I don't think one can have authoritative knowledge of the future routed to us through him, nor do I think his will can be bent via faith because I don't think he has a will to bend. But think I believe in prophecy nonetheless.

You see I am not certain of the limits of the human mind. I have, in fact, seen people cured from illnesses after receiving blessings from my own hands. I have heard many stories of others doing so, and I have even heard stories where the people believed they were able to affect other aspects of reality as well (nature, etc). I am not sure whether I and they are operating under a delusion in that regard or not, but I still don't feel comfortable with using that characterization for the LDS leaders that instructed the handcart company (my separation from the LDS faith notwithstanding), and although I think your hot car and the baby analogy might have some validity for the purpose of our discussion, the questions of the baby's own ability to choose, to think for himself, to remove itself from the car, etc seem to throw a wrench in it somehow so I'm not totally comfortable with it.

But just to humor you, no. If the person really believed God was going to care for their child in their absence I wouldn't call that evil. Stupid, to let the life of an infant hang in the balance of your faith when you know the risk beforehand and it's so easy to just take the baby with you, but evil seems like it needs to be coupled with a bad intention, not just a bad result in order to qualify as such. I think you're trying to stretch the limit of its meaning, as well as the way Brigham Young was using it.

[taekwondave]

If you can't tell the difference between the point TKD was making and what BY was saying in the material you quoted, than there is not much point in discussing this with you.

Ah. I see you already fought my battle for me. And with much fewer words

[SoonerCoug]

Sometimes I think the most amazing thing about Mormonism is the church's ability to turn something entirely negative into a positive. Consider the lost 116 pages. Consider the book of Abraham. Consider the handcarts. They are consistently able to turn something bad into something good. This is not necessarily a criticism--just an observation. But to objective outsiders, turning these things into positives is sort of crazy.

[Pelado]

The Lord's mouthpiece called it "evil". Who am I to question BY. Of course, there are various levels of evil. I'm not saying the handcart leaders were guilty of the same sort of evil that Ted Bundy or Liza Minelli are guilty of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

In early 1973, despite mediocre Law School Admission Test scores, Bundy was accepted into the law schools of UPS and the University of Utah on the strength of letters of recommendation from Evans, Davis, and several UW psychology professors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liza_Minnelli

Minnelli has long suffered from alcoholism, and has been addicted to prescription drugs, originating from a Valium prescription after her mother's death.[33] Minnelli left her 1984 musical The Rink to enter the Betty Ford Clinic.[34] Her use of recreational drugs in the 1970s was noted by Andy Warhol, who in a 1978 diary entry recalled Minnelli arriving at Halston's house and imploring the host to "Give me every drug you've got."[33][35] Along with Warhol and Bianca Jagger, Minnelli made frequent appearances at New York City nightclubs during the late 1970s.

[Portland Ute]

Are you serious? That's amazing, even for the bubble, in my mind.

Thats' about what the wards in Fruit Heights Stake are running. My parents ward and the other wards in their neighborhood are around that number, too.

I think you'd find that in a lot of the older neighborhoods in Kaysville.

Those numbers aren't that unusual in Utah and Davis County.

[Northwestcoug]

Thats' about what the wards in Fruit Heights Stake are running. My parents ward and the other wards in their neighborhood are around that number, too.

I think you'd find that in a lot of the older neighborhoods in Kaysville.

Those numbers aren't that unusual in Utah and Davis County.

Sort of related. But I've been in only one ward where there was 100% home teaching one month. It was in Utah county.

It was in Wymount, but still, Utah county!

[cougjunkie]

Thats' about what the wards in Fruit Heights Stake are running. My parents ward and the other wards in their neighborhood are around that number, too.

I think you'd find that in a lot of the older neighborhoods in Kaysville.

Those numbers aren't that unusual in Utah and Davis County.

No way are your wards running 95%+. JLs is talking about a BYU student ward that is running that high. Not a chance a family ward is close to that.

[Eddie]

No way are your wards running 95%+. JLs is talking about a BYU student ward that is running that high. Not a chance a family ward is close to that.

In the ward I grew up in (Kaysville) I could count maybe 5-10 houses within our ward boundaries where people lived who were either not LDS or not active. I don't know about consistently hitting 95% attendance. But 80% wouldn't even have been hard.

[Jeff Lebowski]

No way are your wards running 95%+. JLs is talking about a BYU student ward that is running that high. Not a chance a family ward is close to that.

Nope. Home ward. Student wards are 100%.

We like to joke that in the ward boundaries we have 2 non-members, 2 inactives, and 1 democrat.

[cougjunkie]

Nope. Home ward. Student wards are 100%.

We like to joke that in the ward boundaries we have 2 non-members, 2 inactives, and 1 democrat.

That is insane. I stand corrected.

Our ward at one time was probably 75%. Over the past 2 years we are closer to 50%.

[Jeff Lebowski]

That is insane. I stand corrected.

Our ward at one time was probably 75%. Over the past 2 years we are closer to 50%.

Seriously! A democrat in Provo?

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Nope. Home ward. Student wards are 100%.

We like to joke that in the ward boundaries we have 2 non-members, 2 inactives, and 1 democrat.

Is the democrat one of the non-members or inactives?

[byu71]

Is the democrate one of the non-members or inactives?

Goes without saying.