Different Assignments than Today

Martha Cragun Cox

If you’re in a ward, then you have at the very least two assignments (your calling and your assignment to visit or home teach). Branches are a different story. A number of callings could be extended along with the assignment to visit or home teach. However, in pioneer times, this wasn’t the case. In fact, very few callings were given to ward members only because the auxiliaries of the Church were not developed until the 1870’s, and as a result, about the only callings were the bishopbric and a few ward teachers. Nevertheless, a family never knew from day to day when a father could be called to leave the family for a few years on a mission, or when a son could be called on one of the “down and back teams” to gather the Saints to Zion, or an assignment to protect settlements during the Blackhawk War, or a call to pick up roots and settle an area many miles away. What were the Cragun’s assigned to do in the early years of the settlement in the Salt Lake Valley?

 

a.      Take in a fatherless family

b.      Protect the gardens and wheat fields from animals and crickets

c.       Build an irrigation ditch

d.      Provide water barrels and ladles at meetings during the hot summer months

 

Yesterday’s answer:

a.      Brother Joseph

 

Joseph was young, emotional, dynamic, and so loved and approachable by his people that they simply referred to him as “Brother Joseph.”

Orton, Chad M. and William W. Slaughter, Joseph Smith’s America (Salt Lake City: Deseret Books, 2005), 14.