The Original Consensus

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/MormonWarMap1.jpg/280px-MormonWarMap1.jpg

What was the general consensus of the Jackson County residents when the Saints first moved into the area?

a.                  That the Saints were lazy

b.                  That the Saints were not that religious

c.                   That the Saints were wealthy

d.                  That the Saints were not much different from them

Yesterday’s answer:

C   Missionaries that can play baseball

Baseball’s first year in Cape Town was certainly a success, both from the sport’s perspective as well as that of the missionaries. [Don Mack] Dalton was quick to recognize this fact and immediately began petitioning his superiors in Salt Lake City to send him a few “good ball players, particularly a pitcher.” In another letter, this one to his uncle George Albert Smith, he wrote, “Would it be possible for you to help get some more Elders down here of those kind who are good ball players, a good pitcher is badly needed—that is if you approve of my activity in baseball.” It is not recorded whether George Albert Smith specifically approved of Dalton’s request for missionaries with baseball skills to be called to serve under his direction’ but Apostle Richard R. Lyman surely did. Several months after receiving Dalton’s application, a day for which Lyman apologize, Lyman wrote to J. Arthur Christensen, president of the North Sevier Stake, and to Harold G. Reynolds, a bishop in that stake, about the possibility of calling Christensen’s son, Nyles, to the South African Mission. But Nyles apparently a very talented left-hand pitcher, had recently fallen ill and the mission call was never extended.

Booker T. Alston, The Cumorah Baseball Club: Mormon Missionaries and Baseball in South Africa, Journal of Mormon History, Summer 2014, 108-109.