Gordon B. Hinckley’s British mission has become the stuff of Mormon legend. Alongside the adventures of Wilford Woodruff at Benbow Pond and the boy Joseph F. in Hawai’i, expect future Mormon children to learn of his father’s rebuke (“Gordon…forget yourself and go to work”) and his soap-box exploits in Hyde Park.
How remarkable for modern English Saints to learn that President Hinckley was interred yesterday with a box of soil from the county of Lancashire where he began his mission in 1933. “Nearly 10 years ago,” explained President Monson, “President Hinckley was given a box containing genuine Lancashire soil, and that soil has been placed in the grave. Therefore, President Hinckley’s final resting place will not only be on U.S. soil, but on also that of his beloved England, where he served the Lord with distinction as a missionary.”
Part of President Hinckley’s genius — and it was a genius uncontrived — was that he made people in diverse places feel special, despite their fleeting interaction with the Prophet and their distance from Salt Lake. English Latter-day Saints feel very proud of their history with Hinckley and mourn a true Anglophile; I imagine many others in the international church feel the same. We can thank Huntsman Airlines to a certain extent, but it takes a special old man to cheerfully climb in a plane and jet around the world when he should be sitting in front of the fire reading the paper.
By all accounts, young Gordon’s depression-era mission was bleak and unkind and yet he carried a love for his mission country literally to his grave. Many of us feel the same, which is odd, at least for me, considering the hostility-cum-ambivalence that my mission stirred in the Austrians whose doors I knocked (for which I don’t blame them). I told my wife that we need to collect some soil from the Vienna Woods to put in my grave. Somehow, this feels right even though I used to walk through those same woods on P-day with the travails of mission life weighing heavily upon me. It is rocky soil.
Anyway, these are some of my random thoughts having watched President Hinckley’s funeral yesterday. There is one more: critics complain at the hagiography of a wealthy, imperfect old man whose death came as a surprise to no-one. They do not give him enough credit for inspiring people to live good lives and for the genuine Mitleid that saw him respond to poverty among the Saints by bringing the temples closer to them and offering hope through the PEF.
God bless Gordon Hinckley as he rests in Lancastrian fields.
February 3, 2008 at 8:46 am
Amen.
February 3, 2008 at 8:51 am
I have a strong feeling about how much President Hinckley did for church members outside of the United States, but I’m not old enough to really quantify it. What you say here is really true from my perspective as well:
February 3, 2008 at 9:19 am
I thought this was a great post of his love for the English people. Having perused his biographical information in great detail you are right that he constantly reiterated his love for the British people. Cheers.
February 3, 2008 at 9:34 am
Thanks Ronan. I share with president GBH a deep love for the sceptered isle and her people (except my heart lies in Berkshire, further south than his beloved Lancashire).
February 3, 2008 at 9:48 am
Indeed, Amen. The comments about the PEF made me remember how I felt when it was announced – perhaps the most powerful experience I have ever had with a general authority.
February 3, 2008 at 9:51 am
Ronan, you are one heckuva writer. That was beautiful.
February 3, 2008 at 10:14 am
Thank you, Ronan.
February 3, 2008 at 11:15 am
This is just beautiful.
February 3, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Amen, and amen.
Fwiw, the bagpipe solo was incredibly, deeply moving to me.
February 3, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Vielen Dank, mein Br8der.
Sam Kitterman
Germany Munich Mission
1974 – 1976
February 3, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I told my wife that we need to collect some soil from the Vienna Woods to put in my grave.
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I’ve been wondering whether being buried with soil from our (literal) mission fields will become a tradition among LDS missionaries. If so, some senior missionaries will have crowded graves, “One couple, who were offering themselves for a seventh mission, had already served on Temple Square, in Alaska, in New Zealand, in Kenya, and in Ghana. They were sent to the Philippines.” — Elder Oaks, GenCon 10/2002
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For me, it symbolizes, among things that will come to me later: love for the people and work in my mission, a memorial to Pres. Hinckley, and acceptance of the call to continue this work beyond the veil.
February 4, 2008 at 5:09 am
Beautiful post, Ronan.
I can also confirm that this meant a lot to the members of my ward who stood to express gratitude and thoughts/feelings about how much they appreciated President Hinckley’s work and love for the members over here.
February 4, 2008 at 6:03 am
We had a President Hinckley-centered Sunday as well, though there was an odd note during the final hour when one member complained that the PEF wasn’t fair to people where he came from (an area where the PEF is available).
February 4, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I loved the bagpipes as well. In the Deseret News article following the services, the songs were identified as “Danny Boy,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Praise to the Man.” I thought that last one was rather an odd choice. Then a friend reminded me that the tune is in fact “Scotland the Brave” — and it made sense after all.