Never Taking a Day Off

President Joseph Fielding Smith

http://media.ldscdn.org/images/media-library/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church/joseph-fielding-smith/president-joseph-fielding-smith-jr-1024617-print.jpg

Who would get on President Joseph Fielding Smith’s case for never taking a day off?

a.                  His mother

b.                  His wife

c.                   His sister

d.                  His counselors

Yesterday’s answer:

B   George A. Smith

From the life of George A. Smith:   Ordained a seventy by Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, Sr., and Sidney Rigdon. In the next nine years he served seven missions: Ohio-Pennsylvania-New York (1835), Ohio (1836), Virginia (1837), Kentucky-Tennessee (1838), England (1840), Middle and Eastern States (1843), and Michigan (1844).

During his 1838 mission he committed “the meanest act of my life.” Delayed for several days on the Mississippi River below Saint Louis, the always hungry Smith observed a black servant baking potatoes in a stove. He offered to buy some, but was refused. When the servant left the stove unattended, Smith helped himself to some of the potatoes, carefully replacing each one with a piece of coal. The potatoes and “a little parched corn” were all he ate in three days.

Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, A Book of Mormons, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1982), 270-271.