17 Nov 2024, Sunday

17 Nov 2014, Sunday

Prioritized Daily Task

12 Noon - Priesthood ministering interview with Elder's Quorum President

12:20 PM - Tithing Settlement

I was up at 7 AM, prayed, showered, shaved, and got ready for church.  Debbie woke and we had prayer together.  I went to the ward building at 8 AM and helped set up chairs for church services today.  I came home and picked Debbie up for Sacrament and Sunday School meetings at 10 and 11 AM.  Debbie and I came home after church.  At noon we went back.  I gave a priesthood ministering report to Cody Leatham, Elders Quorum President.  Afterwards, Debbie and I met with Bishop Derek Soderquist for tithing settlement.  We came home and ate some brunch.  Cody Leatham, my neighbor and Elder's Quorum President came by and brought an invention to the Stake Thanksgiving Dinner this Saturday at 6 PM at the Gateway Stake building.  I had a good visit and prayer with them before going home.  I texted Cody and texted and let him know that Jane and Mark plan to come to the Stake dinner Nov. 23rd.  Beth and Matthew returned my phone call.  Beth was just getting back from Utah and tomorrow is Madeline's 13th birthday.  Matthew is working to get someone to plow out our drive at the cabin in Timber Lakes.  Debbie and I had prayer before going to bed before 10:30 PM.  I wrote in my journal and read some in the scriptures.

Note: Nov 2024 

I knew Homer, Edgar, and David Yarn and a little about their lives as children without a father living in North Georgia in the early days of the Church when missionaries went out without purse or script.

When I was a boy growing up in Georgia and Alabama, I remember hearing, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This philosophy was faithfully flowered by my Dad, James Olin McAlpin, and almost all the families I knew.  No one was turned away but was given food and a place to rest.  I did not know then that this counsel came from the Bible, Hebrews 13:2, and was one of the reasons the early missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other ministers of the different churches were able to go without purse or scrip.

There are at least 4 individuals who travel the earth that have never tasted death.  There are other heavenly messengers who have been sent to the earth with special assignments such as the 3 messengers who visited Abraham before going on to Sodom and Gomorrah.  Genesis 18

Two of the three stories below tie into the life of John Morgan in the 1870s

“Chronicles of a Worn Soul" by Andrew Jones tells the story of Orval "Duke" Porritt, a retired Colonel in the US Airforce WW 2, an inactive member of the Church, who had no contact with the Church for decades.  While he was in service in Europe a stranger knocked at his door and called him by name and told him the Lord has need of you.  He disappeared.  When Duke went to Church the Bishop nor anyone in the Church knew who Duke was or any information as to who the man was that came to his door.

Robert Edge, The Mysterious Preacher by Hyrum Belnap (1858 1938)         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD6pAO9qI2E.               It had a familiar tone to the story of John Morgan and Hayward Valley, GA                                                                              As far as I can tell, the story about Robert Edge comes from Hyrum Belnap, a missionary in 1879 and 1880 in the Tennessee area. In May 1878 in Henderson, TN, a strange man appeared near Lexington TN.  

Hyrum Belnap's autobiography (Elder Belnap was a missionary in the Southern States Mission when John Morgan was the President and headquarters was in Rome, GA) provides some detail about his experience with the story of Robert Edge Pages 26 – 40                  https://studylib.net/doc/8973550/autobiography-of-hyrum-belnap 

Mr. Edge held a meeting at the city of Lexington that will long be remembered by the multitude that gathered to hear him from the surrounding country.  Those attending had listened to the many long appeals for the wandering sinner by the reverend divines were impressed with Mr. Edge’s prayer, in which he asked the Lord to grant unto all people everywhere the desires of their hearts; should they seek knowledge to cause that they might be filled; should they ask for wisdom, give it unto them; if notoriety or fame be their object, to permit them to obtain it; if it should be gold they were seeking, to fill their laps; should the reverend divines seek to bring souls unto Christ, to aid them in so doing; should they preach for hire and divine for money, to hinder them not from receiving it; should the loaves and fishes be their desire, to fill their plates.  More especially did he appeal to God that all those who were then assembled might depart filled with that for which they came; if gospel truth be what they were seeking to fill them to overflowing; if curiosity was what they came for, to cause that they might return feeling more curious.

When I read this, I thought of how the Lord has given us our free agency and we are to pray for nothing for ourselves or others that would be contrary to the will of God.  I don’t think there is anything in this prayer that would be contrary to the will of God.  People are free to choose God or the things of the world but we are not free to choose our consequences.

A report was printed in the Deseret News May 6, 1880                                       A MYSTERIOUS PREACHER

SHADY GROVE Hickman County, Tennessee in April 1878 one Robert Edge a preacher of the gospel after the apostolic order came and commenced warning the people of the judgments of God

John Morgan, Hayward Valley, Georgia miracle  (1870s)                        

When President John Morgan went home from his mission in the Southern States in 1888 he led many of the converts West and some settled in Colorado.  Hyrum and Celia Smoot Dempsey had been converted by a missionary in West Virginia before they moved to Manassa Colorado around 1880.  William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey, was the ninth of 11 children and the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from 1919 to 1926.

Hyrum and Celia Dempsey were from West Virginia and not in the group that John Morgan led West.  Some of the families that went with John Morgan settled in Manassa CO.  One of the families that stayed in Hayward Valley was the Barbour family.   They had a daughter, Rosa.  She became the mother of Earlton Barbour Youngblood Sr..  Earlton Barbar Youngblood, Jr. was the Bishop of the Rome Ward and a good friend of mine.  After I moved my family to Rome Georgia in 1977 I took Earlton Barbour Youngblood Sr. with me to see a 90-year-old gentleman that was living with his daughter in Rome. He had gone West to Manassa, Colorado when he was in his early 20s to see some of his family.  I videoed the conservation with him and Earlton B. Youngblood Sr. 

The story is told of a stranger who came into Hayward Valley a week or so before John Morgan.  

John Morgan and the Miracle in Hayward Valley continued.

While boarding with Sister Heywood in Salt Lake City during the late 1800s, John Morgan dreamed one night that he was traveling down a road in Georgia. He recognized the road because he had used it often as a soldier in the United States Civil War. He came to a fork in the road and saw Brigham Young standing there. Although the right fork led to the next town, President Young told him to take the left fork.

Mr. Morgan, who was not a member of the Church at the time, told Sister Heywood about his dream and asked what she thought of it. She told him she believed he would join the Church and serve a mission in the southern states, and that one day he would find himself on the road he had seen in his dream. When that happened, he should remember Brigham Young’s counsel and take the left fork.

Ten years later after John Morgan had been baptized and was called as a missionary to the southern states.  While on the road to Rome, he came to the fork in the road that he had seen in his dream. He remembered the counsel to take the left fork.  An hour later, he found himself at the edge of Heywood Valley—a beautiful place with the same name as the family with whom he had been staying when he had the dream 10 years earlier.

As he traveled in the fall and winter of 1876 throughout the valley preaching, he found that the people were well-prepared to hear the gospel. After hearing him teach, the families told him that a stranger had come through the valley ten days before, asking permission to mark their Bibles. The stranger had told them that another man would visit in a few days and explain in detail and with great clearness the meaning of the marked structures and the purpose of life and eternal life.  

No one in the valley knew the name of the stranger that marked their scriptures, where he came from, or where he went.  He was described as being neatly dressed and possessing a most pleasant personality.  

During the following weeks, Elder Morgan taught and baptized all with the exception of one or two families who the stranger did not visit.  Twenty-three of the twenty-five families in the valley were baptized. (Bryant S. Hinckley, The Faith of Our Pioneer Fathers [1956], 242–44.)                    Every family visited by the stranger was converted and baptized into the Church by Elder Morgan, including the Methodist minister.  The church building became the meeting house for the new converts and the Medotist minister became the Presiding Elder of the Haywood Branch.  Elder Morgan described the weather at the Haywood Church in Georgia.  "The thermometer was at eleven below zero, and fourteen inches of snow on the level....The pines are bowed almost to the earth by the feathery loads of snow."

A more detailed report is found in the Life and Ministry of John Morgan.