“Pioneer Perseverance,” Liahona, July 2022, United States and Canada Section.
Pioneer Perseverance
From “The Pioneers,” an address delivered at This Is the Place Heritage Park, Salt Lake City, Utah, on July 19, 2021.
The great qualities of the pioneers are guiding principles for each of us as we sacrifice for our nations, families, ward members, and Church.
James Kirkwood carries his younger brother, Joseph, as they climb Rocky Ridge. They were part of the Willie handcart company.
Determination, by Julie Rogers, may not be copied
I believe that most of us view the accomplishments of our Latter-day Saint pioneer predecessors with pride. We also enjoy the blessings of those accomplishments, but it is not enough just to study or reenact them.
For our benefit, we need to identify the eternal principles the pioneers applied and then apply those principles to the challenges of our own day. In that way we honor their pioneering, and we also reaffirm that heritage and strengthen its capacity to bless our own posterity and millions of others in this troubled world.
We are all pioneers when we do so.
Most of our challenges are different from those faced by former pioneers. However, many contemporary challenges are just as dangerous and surely as significant to our own salvation and to the salvation of those who follow us.1 For example, the wolves that prowled around pioneer settlements were no more dangerous to the lives of pioneer children than the drug dealers and pornographers who threaten our children today.
Similarly, the more than 1,900 deaths on the pioneer trail2 are exceeded by the more than 3,700 pandemic deaths we suffered just in Utah by the end of 2021. The physical hunger experienced by our pioneers posed no greater threat to their well-being than the spiritual hunger experienced by many in our day. The children of our earlier pioneers were required to do incredibly hard physical work to survive their environment. That was no greater challenge than many of our young people now face from the absence of hard work, which results in spiritually corrosive challenges to discipline, responsibility, and self-worth.
Jesus taught, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
Pioneer Saints help each other cross the Sweetwater River in Wyoming.
Sweetwater Rescue, by Julie Rogers, may not be copied
Faith through Adversity
The foremost quality of our pioneers was faith. With faith in God, they did what every pioneer does—they stepped forward into the unknown: a new religion, a new land, a new way of doing things. With faith in their leaders and in one another, they stood fast against formidable opposition. When their leader said, “This is the right place,”3 they trusted and they stayed. When their leaders said, “Do it this way,” they followed in faith.
When Lady Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain, received an honorary degree from Brigham Young University in 1996, she said this about our pioneers: “They were self-reliant, hardworking, honorable, and determined to overcome all difficulties. They suffered much, but their faith brought them through all adversity. It was that kind of faith, that courage, that infused the life of this new nation destined to become uniquely great. Yours is a most remarkable story of faith in action, and it changed the world.”4
Many other great qualities are evident in the lives of our pioneers. Among the most obvious are unselfishness and sacrifice. Our Utah pioneers excelled at putting community needs over personal gain and comfort. They also excelled at the related qualities of cooperation and unity.
We have all thrilled at the example of the Saints who immediately responded to the call of President Brigham Young (1801–77) to rescue the stranded handcart companies. We have all marveled at the way so many early pioneers obediently pulled up roots in settled communities and applied their talents and lives to colonizing new areas. A more recent example of sacrifice for the benefit of the community was the way Idaho Saints and those from surrounding states gathered to help restore those suffering from the 1976 Teton Dam disaster in Idaho.
Idaho Saints help their neighbors following the Teton Dam disaster.
Guiding Principles
We praise what the pioneers’ great qualities have done for us, but that is not enough. We should also assure that these same qualities are guiding principles for each of us as we have opportunities to sacrifice for our nations, families, ward members, and Church. This is especially important in societies that have exalted personal interest and individual rights to the point where these values dilute the powers of individual responsibility and sacrifice.
Our people have always been characterized by their extraordinary capacity to cooperate in a common venture. We see the modern manifestations of these pioneer qualities in the great contributions our brothers and sisters have made in a wide variety of private projects and common efforts that require unity and cooperation.
You have already served well, but do you, like the pioneers, have the persistence to continue and endure to the end? Are pioneer celebrations academic, merely increasing our reservoir of experience and knowledge, or will they have a profound impact on how we meet our current challenges?
About 25 years ago, I showed one of my senior brethren a talk I proposed for future delivery. He returned it with a stimulating two-word comment: “Therefore, what?” The talk was incomplete because it omitted what a listener should do. I had failed to follow the example of King Benjamin, who concluded his great address to his people by saying, “And now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them” (Mosiah 4:10).
We live in a day when our leaders have challenged us to gain strength from the example of the pioneers. For example, as the descendants of pioneers frequently displaced from their homes and deprived of their possessions, we need to reach out to welcome current refugees.5 We are also challenged to welcome new members of the Church and to minister to reawaken the faith of those who have strayed.
Handcart pioneers brave a winter storm.
Trails of Faith, by Julie Rogers, may not be copied
A Legacy of Inclusion
The pioneer legacy is a legacy of inclusion. When the Saints were driven out of Missouri, many were so poor that they lacked teams and wagons to move. But Church leaders were adamant that none of the poor be left behind. The response was the same in the exodus from Nauvoo.
At a conference of the Church in October 1845, the membership entered into a covenant to take all the Saints with them.6 Thereafter, in the initial epic struggle across Iowa, the companies that arrived first at their stopping place on the Missouri River sent rescue wagons back toward Nauvoo to gather those who had been too poor to leave earlier.7
The revelation that guided the continuing trip west directed each company to “bear an equal proportion … in taking the poor, the widows, the fatherless, and the families of those who have gone into the army” (Doctrine and Covenants 136:8). When the wagons and handcarts moved west, their movement was always one of inclusion, and no day’s journey ended until every straggler was accounted for.
Similarly, in our own day our worldwide Church is rescuing many who straggle behind the prosperity that many of us enjoy. For example, in 2021 we participated in over 3,900 projects, expending hundreds of millions of dollars to minister to the needs of millions of people in 153 countries.
The General Relief Society Presidency thanks volunteers who sewed millions of masks for medical personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With faith in our Creator and in His leaders, we are united in rescuing family members and others around us in great common causes for the benefit of our communities and our nations. May God bless us in the selfless, enduring pioneer work of rescuing, including, and strengthening His children.