Thanks for this post – it brought back some great memories. Worcester was my first area (back in July 2001), and your parents, along with the rest of the Worcester Ward, were very good to a nervous young missionary. It was a great place to be, and I have very fond memories.

Jeremy

I’d also (see #14) would be interested to know what percentage of pioneers were of British stock.

I’ve visited early chapels/tabernacles and Deseret village in Utah and often commented that the buildings’ architecture is very similar to the Methodist chapels I knew in my youth (alas fast disappearing now). No doubt the builders and architects of British stock made their influence felt!

So after looking at the lush verdance of the English countryside and comparing it to Utah, I felt a pang of sympathy for John Rowberry. However, I read his journal he made after going back to England on a mission. No regrets what so ever. Not a lick of home-sickness. He was so pleased to have left and trekked to Nauvoo and beyond.

Thanks, England, for your great hearts willing to be converted for a better life and with hope for an eternal life.

Thanks so much for this piece, Anthea (and Ronan). My great-great grandfather and his family were baptized in October 1849 in Hertfordshire–they lived in the lovely little village of Redbourn. And they left all and ended up in the desets of Utah and Arizona.

Your post reminds us of how much those people and all the other British saints gave up as they accepted the restored gospel. Thanks.

Here’s hoping you’ll be at Gadfield Elm in summer 2009. If you’re there, we’ll see you then!

Thanks Ronan for #5. All the stories I grew up with are from the convert’s point of view–diary after diary of heartbreaking stories of being disowned and the like. But there is another side of the story, sincerely concerned parents and siblings who forever lost loved ones to a strange land and a strange sect.

We read about the thousands converted by Heber C. Kimball and Wilford Woodruff, and your thoughts here help me remember and appreciate the faith that sustained them as they left home. My own ancestors for whom I am named lived within twenty miles of Worcester, and the price they paid was heavy indeed.

Also, I am reminded yet again of how many small connections keep us together. I’ve attended Sunday services in Daytona Beach, and one of the priests I taught went on to serve part of his mission on the Isle of Guernsey. And I know Ronan.