Lost, but now Found

 

Apostle Erastus Snow and his son found what while up Provo Canyon?

A)     Brigham Young’s top hat

B)      John Taylor’s pocket knife

C)      Porter Rockwell’s six shooter

D)     Blackhawk’s pony

Yesterday’s answer:

C)   Whistled a Church hymn

The evacuation of the missionaries just prior to World War II, particularly from the West German Mission, posed great challenges and provided the setting for some remarkable examples of divine assistance.

   The First Presidency’s telegram arrived in Germany on Friday morning, 25 August. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith and M. Douglas Wood, mission president, were conducting conferences in Hanover, but President Wood and his wife immediately returned to mission headquarters in Frankfurt. By Friday afternoon they had telegraphed all missionaries, directing them to leave for Holland at once. On Saturday morning, a missionary called from the border to tell them that the Netherlands had closed its borders to almost all foreigners fearing that the influx of thousands of refugees would seriously deplete the already short food supply. Meanwhile, bulletins on German radio warned that by Sunday night all railroads would be under military control and no further guarantees could be made for civilian travel.

   When the Dutch closed their border, the resulting crisis challenged the resourcefulness of President Wood and his missionaries. Knowing that they could not take German currency out of the country, almost all of the missionaries had used their excess funds to purchase cameras or other goods that they could take with them. Therefore, they did not have enough money to buy tickets to Copenhagen, Denmark, the alternate point of evacuation leaving several groups of missionaries stranded at the Netherlands border.

   In Frankfurt President Wood gave one of his missionaries, Elder Norman George Seibold, a former football player form Idaho, a special assignment:

“I said; ‘Elder, we have 31 missionaries lost somewhere between here and the Dutch border. It will be your mission to find them and see that they get out.’. . .

   “After four hours on the train he arrived at Cologne, which is about half way to the Dutch border. We had told him to follow his impressions entirely as we had no idea what towns these 31 Elders would be in. Cologne was not his destination, but he felt impressed to get off the train there. It is a very large station, and was then filled with thousands of people. . . . This Elder stepped into this station and whistled our missionary whistle-‘Do What is

Right, Let the Consequence Follow.’” Thereby he located eight missionaries.

   In some towns Elder Seibold remained on board the train, but at others he was impressed to get off. In one small community he recalled, “I had a premonition to go outside the station and out into the town. It seemed silly to me at the time. But we had a short wait and so I went. I passed a Gasthuas, a restaurant there, and I went inside and there were two missionaries there. It was fantastic, in that they both knew me and of course they were quite happy to see me. . . . As surely as if someone had taken me by the hand, I was guided there.” In Copenhagen on Monday, 28 August, President Wood learned that fourteen of the thirty-one missing missionaries had entered Holland safely. That afternoon he received a telegram from Elder Seibold stating that the remaining seventeen would arrive in Denmark that evening.

M. Douglas Wood, in Conference Report, April 1940, pg. 79-80; David F. Boone, “The Worldwide Evacuation of Latter-day Saint Missionaries at the Beginning of World War II,” Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1981, pg. 35-43.