Chapter 34
Go and See
Emmy Cziep was not used to small-town life. Having grown up in a bustling European city, she was at first unimpressed by her new home in Raymond, Alberta, Canada. The town had a few stores, a sugar factory, dirt roads, and no sidewalk. As she looked it over, she thought, “Did I leave all that was ever dear to me for this?”
Her hosts, Heber and Valeria Allen, did all they could to make her feel welcome. She had her own bedroom on the upper level of their spacious home, and Heber gave her a job at his store, the Raymond Mercantile. Emmy knew he did not need her help, but the job let her pay back the money he and Valeria had spent on her emigration. The Allens were just one of many Latter-day Saint families in Canada helping Church members in Europe. Recently, the Allens’ stake had sent fifteen thousand bags of cracked wheat to the German Saints.1
Several weeks after settling in Raymond, Emmy received a letter from Glenn Collette, a former missionary in the Swiss-Austrian Mission. She had first met Glenn while they were serving together in Switzerland, and they had quickly developed feelings for one another. At the time, though, they had remained focused on their missions. Glenn now lived in Idaho Falls in the United States, more than five hundred miles south of Raymond, but he wanted to know if he could visit Emmy during Christmas.
The Allens were not keen on the young man coming all that way to visit Emmy, but they agreed to it, and he spent the holiday with the family. Emmy enjoyed seeing Glenn again, and after he returned to Idaho, they wrote each other nearly every day and talked on the telephone every Saturday night.2
On Valentine’s Day, Glenn proposed to Emmy over the phone, and she accepted. A few days later, she started to worry that they needed more time to get to know each other. She knew he was a good man who had been a hardworking missionary. He also had many friends and seemed to like children. But was it wise to marry a man she had dated mostly over the phone?
Glenn’s letters were reassuring, and they helped her become better acquainted with him. “I love you with my whole being,” he told her in one letter. “Whatever the future may hold for me, if I have you to share it with me, happiness and joy shall be my lot.”3
On May 24, 1949, six months after Emmy arrived in Canada, she and Glenn said a prayer before traveling to the Cardston Temple together. Glenn was nervous and forgot the marriage license, delaying them a little. And Emmy, for her part, was missing her parents in Austria. Yet she knew they were thinking of her and that they understood the importance of the covenants she was making that day.4
Later, as she and Glenn knelt across the altar in the sealing room, Emmy was full of gratitude. Moving to western Canada had given her a chance to be near a temple and attend it with someone she loved. Without the restored gospel, and their commitment to its teachings, she and Glenn would have never found each other.
After a honeymoon in a nearby national park, Glenn returned to Idaho Falls while Emmy remained in Raymond to wait for approval to emigrate to the United States. One evening, about a month after her marriage, she had the chance to attend the temple with a group of missionaries.
“When I go through the temple this evening, I will think of you constantly,” she told Glenn in a letter. She looked forward to the day when they would return to the house of the Lord together. “Until then,” she wrote, “know that I thank you, that I love you.”5
Around this time, in Nagoya, Japan, twenty-nine-year-old Toshiko Yanagida was afraid for her life. She had just suffered a miscarriage, and afterward, her doctor had found a tumor and needed to operate. Since medical equipment was still scarce in Japan after the Second World War, the procedure was dangerous. Unsure if she would survive, Toshiko worried about her sons, three-year-old Takao and five-year-old Masashi. She wanted them to have faith in God, but she and her husband, Tokichi, had never taught them about spiritual things.6
Even though Toshiko was not especially religious, she believed in a higher power watching over her. Growing up, she had gone to a Protestant school and studied Shinto and Buddhism, the two most common religions in Japan. She also remembered attending a meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints once with her father, Tomigoro Takagi, who had joined the Church in 1915. Her father did not often speak about his faith, however, because Toshiko’s grandparents, who had lived with the family at the time, disapproved of the Church. And after the Japanese Mission closed in 1924, when Toshiko was five years old, Tomigoro had rarely had a chance to meet with other Saints.7
Toshiko’s surgery was a success, and when she was strong enough to travel, she went to her parents’ home near Tokyo and talked to her father about religion. “I want to go to some church,” she told him.8
Tomigoro encouraged her to attend a Latter-day Saint service. He himself had begun attending Church meetings again. After the war, Church leaders in Salt Lake City had reached out to Japanese Saints, sending them much-needed shipments of food and clothing. The servicemember groups also continued to provide opportunities for Japanese Church members to meet with American Latter-day Saint soldiers. In 1948, the success of these meetings prompted the First Presidency to once again send missionaries to the Japanese mainland.
In fact, Tomigoro knew a missionary named Ted Price who was serving in Narumi, two hours from Toshiko’s home. “Go and see,” he said. “If you tell Elder Price you are the daughter of Tomigoro Takagi, it will make his day.”9
Toshiko was a little skeptical of her father’s church. She did not know anything about its teachings and did not like the name “Mormon.” But one Sunday, a few months after her surgery, she traveled to a small meeting hall along a hillside in Narumi. Arriving late, she found Elder Price teaching a large group of people about the Book of Mormon. As she listened to their discussion, she began to think differently about the Church. She believed what she heard, and it gave her hope.10
When the meeting ended, she met Elder Price and his companion, Danny Nelson. She liked both young men and looked forward to hearing them speak again. Attending church in Narumi would be difficult, though, since traveling to and from the meeting took so much time. And her husband was not likely to go with her. Sunday was his only day off from work, and he refused to take part in any religion.
But what she heard that day had kindled her faith in the restored gospel. “If I want to give my boys the same, my husband must change,” she told herself. “So how can I do that?”11
While Toshiko Yanagida pondered the future of her family, Primary general president Adele Cannon Howells was looking for a way to help little children learn about the Book of Mormon. For many years, general conference talks and Church lesson materials referenced the book only occasionally. Primary lessons also tended to emphasize Bible stories and the values the Saints shared with other Christian religions. Lately, however, Church leaders and teachers had begun using the Book of Mormon more and more, and some Saints wanted the Primary to revise its lessons to make better use of the Book of Mormon and other unique Latter-day Saint teachings.
Knowing pictures could be a powerful tool for teaching the gospel, Adele wrote to apostle Spencer W. Kimball and several Church organizations about producing an illustrated Book of Mormon storybook for children.12
“Your proposition is very interesting,” Elder Kimball responded. But he worried that the project would be too expensive.13
Adele was not ready to give up on the idea yet. Since her call as Primary general president in 1943, she had carried out several ambitious projects, including two innovative children’s programs. The first, Children’s Friend of the Air, was a fifteen-minute radio show based on stories from the Primary’s official magazine. The second was Junior Council, a weekly television program that debuted in 1948, the same year the Church televised general conference for the first time. Junior Council featured a panel of children who responded to a series of questions submitted by readers of the Children’s Friend and by a live studio audience.14
For many years, Adele had also worked on plans to construct a new children’s hospital in Salt Lake City. The Primary had been operating a hospital in the city since 1922, but the institution now needed larger, updated facilities. Church leaders broke ground for the new hospital in April 1949 on a hilltop overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. To raise the necessary funds, and to help Primary children feel involved in the building’s construction, Adele devised a “buy a brick” program. For every ten cents a child donated, she or he could claim one brick in the hospital’s walls.15
As Adele thought more about illustrating the Book of Mormon, she considered the possibility of commissioning a series of beautiful paintings for the fiftieth anniversary of the Children’s Friend. Since the anniversary was in 1952, only three years away, she needed to find the right artist quickly for the paintings to be finished in time.16
Several Latter-day Saint artists had illustrated scenes from the Book of Mormon before. Decades earlier, George Reynolds, a secretary to the First Presidency, published a Book of Mormon storybook with high-quality illustrations by local artists. A short time later, he published a number of articles about the life of Nephi, illustrated by Danish artist C. C. A. Christensen.
More recently, illustrator Phil Dalby had begun drawing a series of dramatic Book of Mormon comic strips for the Deseret News. And Minerva Teichert, who had studied at some of the best art schools in the United States, had started an ambitious series of Book of Mormon paintings shortly after completing murals for an ordinance room in the Manti Temple. Minerva wanted her paintings to bring the Book of Mormon to life, and many of them featured brightly colored scenes of the women who often went unnamed in the work of scripture.17
As Adele searched for an artist, she learned about the work of Arnold Friberg, a thirty-six-year-old Latter-day Saint illustrator who had recently moved to Utah. One of his religious paintings impressed her. It depicted Richard Ballantyne, the founder of the Sunday School, sitting in front of a crackling fire, leaning forward as he taught a group of raptly attentive children. The details in the painting were meticulous, from the wood grain of the plank floor to the firelight shining on the children’s faces.18
After further investigation, Adele decided that Arnold would be the perfect choice. He was undoubtedly talented, and he was clearly passionate about creating religious paintings. Although his commission would be expensive, Adele had the means to help pay for the paintings herself, if necessary.19
Convinced the project would be of great value, she described the Primary board’s efforts in her diary, hoping their dream would become a reality. “May the Lord help us,” she wrote.20
Back in Japan, Toshiko Yanagida was attending every Church meeting she could. On Sunday mornings, she traveled to Narumi for Sunday School. The class was taught by Tatsui Sato, a former Protestant who had been baptized with his wife, Chiyo, about a year after the war ended. Toshiko then attended sacrament meeting in the evening in another part of town. The branch held MIA meetings on Mondays for anyone who wanted to study the scriptures and play games, and soon she was attending those as well. After her operation, Toshiko had felt physically, emotionally, and financially drained. Being with the Saints lifted her spirits and gave her a new purpose in life.
Her husband, Tokichi, was not happy about her long absences. When she began leaving home more often, sometimes on short notice, he demanded that she choose between her home and her faith. “If you want to go to church that much, let’s divide the children up between us,” he said. “I’ll take our eldest son and you can take the younger one—and you can just leave this house.”21
Toshiko had started going to church for the sake of her sons, so she was not about to let it break up her family. But she did not want to return to her old life either. Instead, she decided to work harder at home to show Tokichi that she could devote herself to the Church without damaging their family. “Please let me keep doing this just a little longer,” she pleaded with him. And both day and night she prayed that he too would come to church and share in her faith.22
One day, Toshiko invited Elder Price and Elder Nelson to her son Takao’s birthday party. The missionaries were happy to come, despite the distance, and arrived with a gift of candy for Takao.23
At the party, Elder Nelson sat next to Tokichi and talked to him about the Church and missionary work. He explained that he and Elder Price paid for their missions themselves and received no money from the Church. The elders also testified of the restored gospel and what it could mean for the family. After the meal, they all played games together, and the young men prayed with the Yanagidas before returning to Narumi.24
“These missionaries are different,” Tokichi told Toshiko later. He disliked priests who took money for their services, so he was impressed that the missionaries were willing to sacrifice so much to serve God. “They are wonderful men,” he said.25
Two months later, in August 1949, Toshiko decided to be baptized. She traveled eight hours to Tokyo so her father could be present. Elder Price performed the baptism, and the mission president, Edward Clissold, confirmed her. Toshiko was overjoyed to finally be a member of the Church, and she could see that her father was happy too.26
Not long after the baptism, Tokichi had to go to Tokyo for business, so Toshiko suggested he visit the mission office and say hello to Elder Nelson, who had recently been transferred there. “If I have time” was all Tokichi said.27
With no telephone in their home, Toshiko had to wait three days for her husband to return with news about his trip. She wanted to know right away if he had gone to the mission home. “Did you see Nelson?” she asked.
“Yes,” Tokichi said. “I was baptized by him, and the person named Elder Goya laid his hands on my head.” Toshiko did not know Koojin Goya, who was one of several Japanese American missionaries from Hawaii who had been called to serve in Japan.28
Toshiko was astonished. Tokichi had never once gone to church with her in Narumi, but somehow the Lord had led him to be baptized.
“Banzai!” she thought. Yes! 29
After Tokichi was baptized, he and Toshiko decided to attend church with the Satos at an American servicemembers group on a military base near their home in Nagoya. Toshiko was happy that her family could now attend church together, but their meetings were in English. Although Tatsui knew English well and could translate for the Yanagidas, Toshiko wished her family could learn about the gospel in their own language.
Before long, she wrote a letter to the new mission president, Vinal Mauss, asking if Japanese meetings could be held in Nagoya.30
On November 6, 1949, Paul Bang baptized his eight-year-old daughter, Sandra. It had been twenty-two years since Paul’s baptism in the nearby Ohio River. During that time, he had watched the Cincinnati Branch grow into one of the strongest Latter-day Saint congregations in that region of the United States. Now he and his wife, Connie, were passing on the legacy of faith they inherited to Sandra and her younger siblings.31
Around a hundred Saints met each week in Cincinnati for sacrament meeting. When constructing a new meetinghouse during the war proved impossible, the branch had purchased a former Jewish synagogue and, with the help of branch president Alvin Gilliam’s construction company, renovated it inside and out. The Saints had also hired an art student to paint a mural of the Savior on the wall behind the pulpit.32
The new chapel gave the branch plenty of space to grow. After the war, many young branch members—especially those with strong family ties to the area—had chosen to stay in Cincinnati, start families, and serve in the Church.33 For a time, Paul had been a counselor in the branch presidency, and he was now on the district high council with his father, Christian Bang. Connie, meanwhile, led the Gleaner Girls in the branch’s YWMIA.34
The size of the Cincinnati Branch, as well as the experience of its members, allowed it to support smaller branches in the area. Every Sunday, families from Cincinnati drove to Georgetown, a village forty miles to the east, to support a small group of Saints there.35
As strong as the Cincinnati Branch was, its members remained divided over racial segregation. Len and Mary Hope, the only African American couple in the branch, continued to hold monthly meetings in their home because some branch members still did not want them attending regular Church services. The gatherings had grown to as many as thirty people, including the Bangs and their extended family. Mary never knew how many people would come, but she always seemed to prepare enough food for everyone. Len conducted the meetings and chose the hymns. One of his favorites was “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.”36
Sometimes Len’s friends criticized him for belonging to a church where he could not hold the priesthood or attend services, but he and Mary remained true to their faith. Their friends in the branch watched out for them, providing priesthood blessings for family members and helping with home repairs and improvements.37 When one of the Hopes’ African American friends, Mary Louise Cates, accepted the gospel, Paul baptized her. A few years later, a member of the branch gave the Hopes’ granddaughter a baby blessing.38
After nearly a quarter century of steadfast faith, Len and Mary had taken a trip to Utah in 1947. They stayed in the home of former Cincinnati missionary Marion Hanks, who showed them around Salt Lake City and took them to general conference. They were also welcomed into the home of Abner and Martha Howell, another Black couple in the Church. The trip and the kind treatment they received delighted the Hopes. Now, two years later, Len’s health was declining, and he wanted to move to Utah and be buried there someday.39
Not long after Sandra Bang’s baptism, the district presidency called Paul to serve as president of a small branch in Hamilton, a city north of Cincinnati. A short time later, Connie was called to be the Cincinnati Branch Relief Society secretary. Her patriarchal blessing had urged her to be a willing worker in the kingdom of God, and she and Paul had tried to be just that. All along the way, they had seen the Lord’s blessings.40
Through the patriarch, the Lord had also promised Connie that her father, George Taylor, would share in the joy of the gospel. For many years, Connie had no reason to think her father would ever embrace the Church. Then, after the war, cancer attacked his already failing body. He began attending church with Connie’s mother, Adeline, worshipping with the Saints until his death in 1947.
After he died, George appeared to Adeline in a dream. He looked sickly and downhearted, and he still walked with the limp he had carried for years. The dream confused Adeline, and she asked a Church leader what it meant. He told her that George wanted his temple work done.
So Adeline traveled to Utah to receive her temple blessings and arrange for George to receive his. She was sealed to him by proxy on September 28, 1949, in the Salt Lake Temple. Sometime after that, George came again to her in a dream. This time he was happy and healthy, free of the maladies that had hampered him in life.
He took her in his arms, and they danced.41