Articles

Big Questions Come, Follow Me Insights Volunteer Spotlights

Apr 11, 2022

Insights from a Stellar Volunteer: Sarah Paul

by Connor Olvera

The words of prophets, modern and ancient, bring us closer to Jesus Christ. Studying their accounts gives us a front row seat to the challenges they faced and how their faith in Jesus Christ aided them. Sarah Paul, a volunteer at the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation, studies the powerful experiences and words of the prophet Wilford Woodruff every day as she researches members of Wilford Woodruff’s extended family. Sarah Paul Sarah graduated from BYU with a degree in history. She con ...

Mar 21, 2022

The Lord was with Wilford and Joseph

by Richard Woodruff Lambert

Children love stories, and as a child my mother Ruth would read to me from a children’s book of Bible stories. One of my favorites was the story of Joseph with his coat of many colors. As I learned about his life it was clear, as the scriptures recorded, that “the Lord was with Joseph“ always.

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Mar 2, 2022

“O Warren”: When Wilford Woodruff Lost His Best Friend to Apostasy

by Jordan Woodruff Clements

Wilford Woodruff’s experiences, when contrasted with the experiences of his older brother Azmon, and his missionary companion Warren Parrish, provide an interesting case study for those seeking to understand what actions and attitudes will sustain the faith of a young adult or any new convert.

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Feb 8, 2022

Wilford Woodruff and the Book of Abraham

by Kerry Muhlestein

As we begin our study of the Old Testament, including the great Patriarch Abraham, and read from the Book of Abraham, it is worth pausing to consider how blessed we are to have the writings of this fabled man of God. Our gratitude for his writings, and for the prophet Joseph Smith who translated them for us, can be increased as we look at the reaction of those who first received these writings. The example of Wilford Woodruff is particularly inspiring for me.

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Feb 1, 2022

The First Book of Wilford

by Jane Clayton Johnson

By Jane Clayton Johnson, Board Member During the final days of December 1833, twenty-six-year-old Wilford Woodruff began his first journal as a new convert. He titled his first entry, “The First Book of Wilford.” Wilford had a divine calling to keep a record. In the preamble of his first journal he writes, “It is at once beneficial and instructive to the reflecting mind to review the past with candor and rightly consider the present and be in perfect readiness for that which ...

Jan 31, 2022

Train Up A Child: Wilford Woodruff’s Biblical Foundation

by Jennifer Ann Mackley

Wilford Woodruff begins his autobiography, Leaves from My Journal, by explaining that he spent his childhood “under the influence of what history has called the ‘Blue Laws’ of Connecticut.” He said he suffered the most from the rules that forbade running and playing from sunset on Saturday through Sunday night. The length of this restriction was based on Old Testament scripture, “The evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:5), and Wilford felt his parents were very strict in enforcing it: “all day Sunday we had to sit very still and say over the Presbyterian catechism and some passages in the Bible.”

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Jan 11, 2022

In the Beginning: Being Present at the Creation with Moses and Joseph Smith

by Steven C. Harper

In all of recorded history, two lessons on "the beginning" (Genesis 1:1) stand out among all others. The first, recorded in the Pearl of Great Price, was sort of like “Take Your Child to Work Day” when a child spends one day at work with a parent to learn what they do. Moses was the child. Heavenly Father was the parent. Moses was “transfigured before him” and the lesson was delivered with stunning effects.

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Dec 8, 2021

Gordon Gibb Volunteer Spotlight

by Howard Collett

GORDON AND VICKIE GIBB Gordon Gibb is a volunteer for the Crowdsource Collection on FromThePage of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation. “It has been wonderful working with Gordon,” said Jason Godfrey, Lead Editorial Assistant. “The Foundation has added hundreds of pages of missionary letters that Wilford Woodruff received, and Gordon was always one of the first people to make sure these letters were transcribed. He was both efficient and careful in his process of transcri ...

Dec 8, 2021

The Encouragement of Marriage

by Howard Collett

The Lord has informed us that marriage is ordained of God unto man. The institution of marriage, in some communities of which we read, is falling almost into disrepute. It is alleged that there is a growing tendency in this direction among us. The cause is doubtless, traceable to the increase of wealth and the disinclination of young men to take upon them the burdens of a wife and family. As we depart from the simplicity of early days, we may naturally expect that this tendency will incre ...

Dec 5, 2021

On the Abrahamic Test of Plural Marriage: Revelations to Wilford Woodruff and Lorena Larsen

by Steven C. Harper

Plural marriage was an Abrahamic test. The Church’s essay on the topic begins, “Latter-day Saints believe that the marriage of one man and one woman is the Lord’s standing law of marriage. . . . By revelation, the Lord commanded Joseph Smith to institute the practice of plural marriage among Church members in the early 1840s. For more than half a century, plural marriage was practiced by some Latter-day Saints under the direction of the Church President.” The next line acknowledges, “Latter-day Saints do not understand all of God’s purposes in instituting, through His prophets, the practice of plural marriage.”

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