“Carefully and Prayerfully,” Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 36: “Carefully and Prayerfully”
Chapter 36
Carefully and Prayerfully
Clemencia Pivaral glanced at a clock as her train pulled out of Guatemala City Central Station. It was eight o’clock in the morning on October 10, 1951. Far off in the distance, gray clouds darkened the sky, threatening rain. But above the station, the skies were clear and sunny. It was a good day, Clemencia thought. She and her twelve-year-old son, Rodrigo, were starting a two-thousand-mile journey with two other Guatemalan Saints. Their destination was a large conference of Spanish-speaking Saints at the temple in Mesa, Arizona.1
For the last seven years, hundreds of Saints from Mexico, Central America, and the western United States had gathered annually in Mesa to attend a conference and do temple work. Most of the Saints who came to the event had saved for years to have enough money for the trip. Three Arizona stakes hosted them when they arrived, with local members housing the visitors and preparing meals so their guests could spend more time in the temple. To offset the cost of the conference, the Spanish-speaking Saints charged admission to two performances of a talent show and The Time Is Come, a genealogy-themed play written by Ivie Jones, the wife of the Spanish-American Mission president.2
This was Clemencia’s first time attending the conference. She had met the missionaries in early 1950, shortly after district president John O’Donnal sent a pair of elders to her hometown, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second-largest city. Clemencia was a twenty-nine-year-old widow, and the elders and sisters who taught her were happy when she quickly embraced their lessons on baptisms for the dead, temples, and other gospel principles. A few months later, she found work as a teacher of blind, deaf, and nonverbal students in Guatemala City, so she and her son moved there and began attending church with the O’Donnals and other members of the Guatemala City Branch.3
One day, while Clemencia was studying the Doctrine and Covenants at the branch meetinghouse, Mexican Mission president Lucian Mecham asked her if she was a member of the Church. “No,” she replied. “The missionaries have not yet asked me if I want to be baptized.”
President Mecham interviewed her immediately, asking her if she believed in everything the missionaries had taught her. She told him she did.
“If you are ready to be baptized,” he said, “how about tomorrow?”
“Yes!” she replied.4
Now, more than a year later, she was on her way to the temple to receive her endowment. The Church in Guatemala was still small, with fewer than seventy members. Only a few Guatemalans had received their temple blessings, including Carmen O’Donnal, who had been endowed and sealed in the Salt Lake Temple the year after her baptism.5 Clemencia was glad to be making the trip. The oppressive heat on the train made her drowsy, but as she watched the lush scenery of Guatemala’s coast outside her window, nothing could dampen her spirits.
She and the other Saints on the train passed the time by reading their scriptures and discussing the gospel. Clemencia also met a woman who seemed eager to talk about religion. After they shared their beliefs with one another, Clemencia gave her a copy of La verdad restaurada, a missionary pamphlet by apostle John A. Widtsoe. She invited her to attend church the next time she was in Guatemala City.6
After arriving in Mexico City, Clemencia and the other Guatemalan Saints joined a group of Mexican Church members on their way to the conference. They traveled north for three days in a van, singing as they went, and finally arrived in Mesa on October 20. There the Guatemalan Saints met up with John and Carmen O’Donnal, who had traveled to the United States earlier in the month for a vacation.7
The first days of the conference were filled with meetings and temple preparation. Ordinance work began on October 23, the third day of the conference. A huge crowd turned out for the first endowment session of the day, and the ordinance took six hours to complete. Clemencia received her endowment and then, on the following day, she received the ordinance for her maternal grandmother, who had died when Clemencia was a little girl. Later that day, Clemencia and Ralph Brown, the missionary who had baptized her, acted as proxies in the sealing of her grandparents.8
After the conference, Clemencia and her son traveled to Salt Lake City with the O’Donnals. They visited Temple Square, and Clemencia and the O’Donnals attended more endowment sessions. John also met with Church leaders about building a chapel and mission home in Guatemala City.9
The work of the Lord was expanding in Central America, and soon Guatemala and its neighboring countries would have a mission of their own.
On January 15, 1952, John Widtsoe submitted a report to the First Presidency on European Latter-day Saint emigration. Thousands of Saints had fled their homelands since the end of the war, and the presidency had asked John to keep track of the movement and well-being of the emigrants. While some of these Saints had moved to South America, Africa, or Australia, most had settled in the United States or Canada, often with the encouragement and help of missionaries and other Saints.
Although it was good news that the emigrating Church members had found safe harbors, John and other leaders were concerned about how the loss of these Saints would affect Europe’s struggling branches. If the Church was to grow on the continent, it needed the Saints to remain in their own countries. But what could persuade them to stay—especially when so many challenges surrounded them?
Eighteen months earlier, John had raised this question at a conference of European mission leaders in Copenhagen, Denmark. During the meeting, several mission presidents agreed that the European Saints were emigrating because they were terrified of another war breaking out, and they longed for the stability and support they could find in the Church in North America.
“We lost twenty-eight members during the air raids in Hamburg alone, and the people remember that,” one mission president had told John. “I don’t know how we can stop the people from wanting to go to America.”
“You can’t,” another mission president said. “The people would swim the ocean if they could.”
John was surprised that Saints were leaving even Denmark, which had experienced fewer hardships than many other European countries during the war. He asked the presidents what could be done.
“I think if we had a temple in Europe,” a mission president suggested, “we could stop it quite a bit.”
The idea was inspired. With John’s endorsement, the mission presidents recommended that the First Presidency approve plans for a temple in Europe. “One thing is certain,” John told the men. “We can’t convert the whole world and bring them to America.” Instead, the Church could bring temples to the world.10
At the time John submitted his report on emigration, the First Presidency had not made any announcements about building a temple in Europe. But they had already authorized John to oversee a committee on translating the temple endowment into several European languages. Since the ordinance was available only in English and Spanish, Saints who spoke other languages participated without fully understanding the words of the ceremony.
The committee had recruited several European Saints, including Pieter Vlam from the Netherlands, to do the translations, which would be used in special sessions in the existing temples. But if the Church built a temple in Europe, it could provide ordinances in multiple languages to Saints from many nations.11
A few months after receiving John’s report, President McKay spoke to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles about emigration. After acknowledging the need to strengthen the European branches, the prophet mentioned that the president of the British Mission had recently urged him to build a temple in Great Britain.
“The brethren of the First Presidency considered it carefully and prayerfully,” President McKay told the Twelve, “and have now come to the conclusion that if we build a temple in Great Britain, we should at the same time build one in Switzerland.” During the two world wars, Switzerland had remained neutral, giving it political stability. The country was also near the center of western Europe.
After President McKay finished speaking, John said, “The people in Great Britain and foreign-speaking missions are dreaming of a time when a temple will be erected in Europe.” He voiced his full support for the First Presidency’s plan, and everyone in the room agreed that the Church should proceed with building the temples.12
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the city of Berlin was at the center of the Cold War. In 1949, Germany had split into two nations. The Soviet-occupied eastern region had become a new communist state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany. The remainder of the country became the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. Although Berlin was in the GDR, the west side of the city had been under the control of France, Great Britain, and the United States when the country split. Now the city was divided as well, east and west, between communist and democratic powers.13
Traveling between East and West Berlin did not normally pose a problem. But that spring, border officials stopped twenty-one-year-old Henry Burkhardt on his way to the headquarters of the East German Mission in the Allied Zone. Henry was a missionary from the GDR serving as a district president in Thuringia, a state southwest of Berlin. He had entered West Berlin many times before, but this time the officials found that he was carrying his district’s yearly reports, including tithing lists. And the sight of the financial records alarmed them. The East German economy was sluggish, and the country’s leaders had forbidden its citizens from sending or carrying money into West Germany.
As a mission leader in the GDR, Henry knew he had to follow the new restrictions carefully, so he always deposited tithing money in an East German bank. His effort to carry the reports out of the country was enough to raise the officers’ suspicions, though, and they detained him at once.
Henry remained in custody for three days before the officers determined that he had done nothing wrong. They released him, but not before forbidding him from delivering the reports to the mission office.14
About a month later, Henry returned to West Berlin to attend a Church conference. Although East German citizens were technically free to worship as they pleased, the government was wary of outside influences on its people, including foreign religions. Since the GDR had expelled non-German religious leaders from its borders, North American missionaries in the East German Mission were confined to West Berlin. All other mission work in the country fell to East Germans like Henry.
After the conference ended, the mission president, Arthur Glaus, asked Henry to be the Church’s official recordkeeper in the GDR and to serve as a liaison between mission headquarters and the East German branches. Henry understood that he would be released as the district president in Thuringia soon after the conference so he could devote himself to these new duties. But he also learned from the mission office that he might be called as the district president in Berlin or maybe a counselor in the mission presidency.
“Well,” he thought, “whatever happens, it is the will of the Lord.”15
Henry was still serving as district president in Thuringia two months later when President David O. McKay came to Europe on his first international tour since becoming Church president. The prophet and his wife, Emma Ray McKay, were spending six weeks in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, France, and Germany. Although one former mission president had advised him not to come to Berlin, fearing it would be dangerous to travel through the GDR, he came anyway. The city was a place where Saints from both sides of divided Germany could meet together.16
President McKay arrived in Berlin on June 27, 1952, and during his visit, he and President Glaus asked to meet with Henry. President McKay started the interview by asking him a few questions about himself. Then the prophet said, “Are you willing to serve as a counselor in the mission presidency?”17
Although Henry was expecting new responsibilities, the request hit him like a thunderclap. He would be the only East German counselor in the mission presidency, not just a liaison between the mission president and the Saints in the GDR. With the government refusing to recognize the legitimacy of foreign religious leaders, he would be, in effect, the presiding Church authority over more than sixty branches in the country. If East German officials had any issues with the Church, they would come to him.
The call made Henry anxious. He had been a member of the Church all his life, but he was still young and inexperienced. He was also shy around others. Yet he did not voice these concerns. The Lord’s prophet had just issued him a calling, so he accepted it.
Less than two weeks later, Henry moved to the city of Leipzig to open a small mission office. The work kept him busy, and he tried hard to build relationships with local government and priesthood leaders. But the new responsibilities were a strain, and he soon began losing sleep.
“Why was I the person called to do this work?” he asked himself.18
After spending a week with the Saints and missionaries in Germany, President and Sister McKay traveled to Switzerland for a second time on their tour. Unbeknownst to most Saints, the prophet had come to Europe to select sites for the British and Swiss temples. In England, he had selected a site in Newchapel, Surrey, just south of London. He had then gone to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, and chosen a site for a temple there. After continuing on to the Netherlands, however, he had learned that his choice for the Swiss Temple site had been purchased by another party. Now they had to start their search over again.19
On July 3, Samuel and Lenora Bringhurst, the Swiss-Austrian Mission leaders, met the McKays at the Zurich airport. The party drove to Bern, where they looked over several properties for sale. On the outskirts of town, in a village called Zollikofen, they stopped at a train station. President McKay looked to his left and pointed to the crest of a hill near a forest. Could that property be obtained? he wondered. Samuel replied that it was not for sale.20
The next morning President McKay continued his search. He found a large plot not far from the Bern Branch meetinghouse. It was a good setting for a temple, and he authorized Samuel to purchase the property at once. His work accomplished, the prophet left Bern the next day, moving on to the last leg of his tour. He spoke to large crowds in Basel and Paris before returning home to Salt Lake City in late July.21
Soon after President McKay’s return, the First Presidency announced the plan to build a temple in Switzerland. French and Swiss Saints were ecstatic. “It gives tangible and convincing proof,” read one article in L’Étoile, the Church’s French periodical, “that the Church wishes to remain in Europe and continually develop the branches of the European missions.”22
But there was trouble in Bern. Samuel was unable to finalize the purchase of the temple site. The property was part of an estate controlled by thirty heirs, some of whom objected to the sale. In mid-November, Samuel wrote President McKay to say that the property was no longer available.
The prophet called Samuel the next day on the telephone. “President Bringhurst,” he said, “is there a sinister force opposing us?”
Samuel did not know the answer. “They merely told us they have changed their minds,” he said.
Samuel described two other properties. One of them was the property near Zollikofen that President McKay had pointed to during his visit. Samuel said it was an ideal location, tucked away from noise and traffic and yet just a four-minute walk from the streetcar. And it had recently been put on the market for sale.
During the conversation, Samuel was silent about his own spiritual impressions. He and Lenora had been praying about which of the two properties to recommend to President McKay. Earlier that week, they visited the property near Zollikofen one last time. As they walked across the land, they had a peaceful feeling that the Lord wanted the site for a temple.
“Surely this is the place,” Samuel had said to Lenora.
“I feel the same way about it,” she agreed.23
After speaking with Samuel, President McKay consulted with his counselors, who recommended that the Church buy the property. He then called Samuel back and authorized the purchase.
A week later, after the transaction was completed, President McKay wrote the mission president, thanking him for his efforts.
“After five months’ negotiations for the former site, all efforts failed, and when this property came on the market the deal was closed within one week!” the prophet marveled. “Surely the Lord has had a directing hand in this.”24
Around this time, John Widtsoe published In a Sunlit Land, a memoir spanning his birth in Norway to his recent service in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He had written the book for his family, but at his friends’ urging, he had reluctantly agreed to publish it for a wider audience. He dedicated the book to his posterity and to “the courageous youth” of the Church.25
John, now eighty years old, was starting to feel his age. A few years earlier, a small hemorrhage in his eye had damaged his sight, forcing him to read with a magnifying glass. He continued to keep a busy schedule until he started having severe lower back pain. He began meeting regularly with his doctor, who diagnosed him with cancer.
Because of his age, doctors did not want to operate on him. John knew he was dying, but he did not stop working. He started relying more and more on his wife, Leah. “I have enjoyed a rich life,” he told G. Homer Durham, his daughter Eudora’s husband, “and I am willing to live and serve as long as the Lord permits.”26
John was now ten years older than his mother, Anna, had been when she passed away. If he had achieved any distinction in his long life, it was because of her choice to join the Church in Norway, encourage his education, and nurture his faith. Anna too had rarely slowed down. In the years before her death, she had frequently counseled other immigrants as they settled in Zion.
John still remembered how one newly arrived convert had come to her complaining bitterly about the Church and Saints in Utah. “We have come here to build up Zion,” Anna promptly reminded him, “not to tear it down.” The convert had taken Anna’s words to heart, and they changed the course of his life.
John himself had spent much of his life building up the Church, with Leah at his side. Their efforts to strengthen the Church in Europe and train its leaders had helped the European Saints weather the Second World War and navigate its tumultuous aftermath. Now the faith and diligence of those Saints would be rewarded with the construction of two temples.27
The new temples would anchor the Church in Europe and advance another work John loved: genealogy. After the war, in fact, the Church had begun an ambitious program of photographing birth and death records in European archives and parishes, making available millions of new names for temple work.28
Since returning from their mission, John and Leah had also built up the Church through writing. Together they published The Word of Wisdom: A Modern Interpretation, which drew on their faith in revelation and their scientific understanding of nutrition to promote greater health among readers. Beginning in 1935, John became editor of the Improvement Era and wrote a regular column called “Evidences and Reconciliations,” which answered gospel questions submitted by readers. He eventually collected the columns into several popular books.29
John’s health worsened as the year progressed. Leah bore his illness with dignity, although it was hard for her to believe that her husband of more than fifty years would soon be gone. She and John had been loving companions and the best of friends. As she watched his health fade, her testimony of the restored gospel gave her strength, as it had when their son Marsel died.
“I don’t know what people do who do not have our understanding of life hereafter, with its continuation of family relations and joys,” she wrote a friend.
On November 19, John had the opportunity to hold his first great-grandchild, Kari Widtsoe Koplin, a few days after she was born. He was confined to bed by that time, but he was grateful to see a new generation of Widtsoes enter the world. A few days later, his doctor informed him his kidneys were failing.
“So that’s how it is going to be,” John said. Outside was a beautiful fall day, bright with sunshine.
He passed away at home on November 29, 1952, with his doctor and family beside him. At the funeral, President McKay observed, “A man who makes the greatest contribution to humanity is he who loves and follows truth at all costs.” He then quoted John’s final words from In a Sunlit Land: “I hope it will be said of me, I have tried to live unselfishly, to serve God and help my fellow men, and use my time and talents industriously for the advancement of human good.”
Later, as Leah rode to the cemetery for John’s burial, she saw snowflakes out her window. The sight cheered her. “John was born in a severe storm,” she thought, “so now his body’s interment receives the benediction of a beautiful white blanket of snow.”30