Hank Smith: 00:00:00 Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:00:03 For me as a coalition, that was really meaningful because I saw everybody around me having these grand ideas. You know, the only way to be successful in life is if you’re a doctor or a lawyer, or I’m gonna start a tech company. I’m gonna change the world. Me little history major. I’m like, I’m gonna go take my Shakespeare comedy class now. I don’t know. I felt such weight and pressure and guilt because I wasn’t interested in that same track.

Hank Smith: 00:00:38 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host. I’m here with my faithful, just and wise co-host, John Bytheway. John, that’s section 51 verse 19, whoso is found a faithful just and wise steward, which also means cohost, shall enter into the joy of his Lord and shall inherit eternal life. How do you feel?

John Bytheway: 00:01:04 I feel 0 outta three, but let’s keep going. These are aspirations, right?

Hank Smith: 00:01:09 Yep. One day we’re gonna compile a list of all these adjectives for you. You can look at ’em every day. Here’s your bar. John, Emily Utt comes highly recommended by the other historians who work for the church. I’ve had many say you haven’t had Emily Utt on your podcast yet. What are you doing? Make sure you get Emily. We are in sections 51 through 57 today. John, when you think of the move to Kirtland and all that happens there, we’re there for seven years, eight years almost. What do you think of when you think of Kirtland Ohio?

John Bytheway: 00:01:47 I think of Carl Anderson. I think of America’s sacred ground. This video that BYUTV made, I think of Steve Young’s t-shirt and how a Super Bowl MVP, can move a road, which is a fascinating story. Another list of difficulties for the Saints is, okay, move to the Ohio, and as soon as they do, okay, but actually Zion’s gonna be over there, the back and forth of that, the difficulties in that.

Hank Smith: 00:02:15 Emily, when you think of Kirtland, Ohio, I’m guessing you’ve been there a few times. What comes to mind? Tell us about how you feel about Kirtland, Ohio.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:02:25 I also think of Carl Anderson. Carl was my institute teacher. In

John Bytheway: 00:02:29 No way.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:02:30 Cleveland as an undergraduate. When I think of Ohio, I think of a place that sets us on the foundation of who we are as people and as saints. I think of this place where we are just figuring out what in the world we’re doing, what does it mean to become the children of God? I think of Ohio, and I think of a place that’s going to set me on the path, and that’s gonna give me the foundation to build something that will last for eternity. I think of covenant, I think of priesthood. I think of God’s kingdom rolling forth on the earth. I also think of really good ice cream and pierogis, all of the things you can get in Cleveland.

Hank Smith: 00:03:14 Yeah. That’s so wonderful. Yeah, and so much has changed in the last year for Kirtland, Ohio.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:03:20 Yeah. It’s been a crazy year in Kirtland with the acquisition of the Kirtland Temple and other historic properties. Any place where God speaks to his people and where that people become better becomes sacred, and so you walk the streets of Kirtland. There’s a holiness there watching people trying and failing and trying again and failing again and having no idea what’s going on. But they’re gonna keep trying.

Hank Smith: 00:03:48 They’re gonna keep trying, and they’re so new. For anyone listening, who’s Carl Anderson? In our world, we call him Mr. Kirtland. Mr. Kirtland. Yeah. He’s lived in Kirtland, and I think he knows every square foot of it. Right behind him is Joe Jackson. I think both of them would say, look, the church was organized in New York, but it was restored in Ohio, and of course, the jewel of Kirtland is that Kirtland temple, and it’s not perfect. That’s the thing I love about it. It’s not a perfect building. When you visit it, you go, wow, how is this thing still standing? I love how the Lord says, I accept it. It’s not perfect, but I accept it and I think of myself, Hank, you’re not perfect, but I accept you.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:04:33 Yeah. I think about the enthusiasm they had when they built Kirtland. You have a bunch of people. Some of them are a little bit older, they’re a little more established. They’re storekeepers. They have some cash, but you also have a lot of young kids who have no idea what they’re doing. They’ve never built a house, let alone a house of the Lord. I walk into any of our sites really in Kirtland, especially in the temple, and I can see how little they actually knew, and I can see the enthusiasm with which they went and did it. Anyway, it’s literally in the floorboards.

Hank Smith: 00:05:08 And it’s so applicable. I wanna read you both something that I haven’t read on the show before. When the church acquired the Kirtland Temple, I immediately talked to my friend Alex Baugh, who wasn’t as surprised as I was. He said, well, I kind of knew what was coming. He sent me a quote from 1882, this is John Taylor. He said, as a people or community, we can abide our time, but I will say to you, Latter-Day Saints, that there is nothing of which you have been despoiled by oppressive acts or mobocratic rule, but that you will again possess or your children after you, your rights in Ohio, your rights in Jackson, Clay, Caldwell, and Davies counties in Missouri will yet be restored to you. Your possessions of which you have been fraudulently despoiled in Missouri and Illinois, you will again possess and that without force or fraud or violence. Then this. Listen to this, the Lord has a way of his own in regulating such matters.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:06:15 There’s also almost like an Old Testament component to that, that God will always redeem his people. No matter how long we wander in the wilderness, no matter if our lands are taken, God’s covenant is always going to win.

Hank Smith: 00:06:31 It will win out.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:06:32 He will always redeem his people.

Hank Smith: 00:06:35 I really thought it was April Fools when one of my students came up and said, Hey, look at my phone. Guess what just happened? No way.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:06:43 I almost fainted when I found out. I was lying flat on the floor going, no way. This can’t happen.

Hank Smith: 00:06:51 I love it. John, Emily has never joined us before, shockingly to the historians of the church. Emily has never joined us before, so let’s introduce her to the followHIM audience.

John Bytheway: 00:07:02 Yeah. I know that we’re both excited about having Emily on because she is a historic sites curator. We’ve seen some of those historic sites and we love seeing those historic sites, and she’s a curator there for the church history department, and for 20 years she has been involved in preserving and sharing sacred places of the global church, including temples, meeting houses, and historic sites. As we’ve just talked about recently, her preservation work has taken place at the Manti, Utah Temple, Logan, Utah, Tabernacles. Those early tabernacles are just beautiful. The Kirtland Temple that we just talked about, the beehive house, she holds a bachelor’s in history and religion from Case Western Reserve University, and a master’s in Historic Preservation from Goucher College. Did I say that right? Goucher?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:07:52 You said that right.

John Bytheway: 00:07:53 Yeah. Go gauchos. Okay. I mean, what’s the mascot? What are they?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:07:58 Gophers.

Hank Smith: 00:07:58 The gophers.

John Bytheway: 00:08:00 Go Goucher gophers

Sister Emily Utt: 00:08:00 The mascot is fear the gopher.

John Bytheway: 00:08:04 Okay. We’re gonna feel the gopher influence today. This is great. When she isn’t in a hard hat and work boots at a construction site, I love this, you’ll find her making fancy meals on backpacking trips. How do you do that? That, well, this is a whole nother topic, serving as ward organist and Oh, I love this part. Trying to find room in her house for yet another bookcase. Yes. I totally get that. What a fun, interesting, unique background. We’re so excited to talk to you about how the physical objects you’ve seen relate to the spiritual things that are happening. Thank you, Emily, for joining us today.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:08:46 Any chance I have to talk about sacred place I’m gonna do it. This is great.

Hank Smith: 00:08:51 Emily, without revealing too much that you can’t reveal, tell us what you’re working on now. What’s the future for sites here in the next few years?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:09:00 The future for sites is to help people connect. We are coming up on some major anniversaries in the next decade, all the way from the organization of the church to the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, so we’re working on projects that are going to help people connect in more powerful ways to those early events. So we’re working on a project right now with the Hill Cumorah getting ready for the events of the Book of Mormon in the next few years. We’re talking about some work in Missouri with everything between Farr West and Liberty and Independence. We’re studying the Kirtland Temple. A year ago this wasn’t on our radar, and now we’re trying to figure out what the next 10 years of that building is gonna look like. It’s gonna be great.

Hank Smith: 00:09:46 Emily, we are in sections 51 through 57. I’m going to read from the Come, Follow Me manual, and then John and I are just excited to learn from you. I’m sure our listeners are as well. Here’s how the manual begins. For church members in the 1830s gathering the Saints and building the city of Zion were spiritual, as well as temporal labors with many practical matters to address. Someone needed to buy land where the saints could settle. Someone needed to print books and other publications, and someone needed to run a store to provide goods for people in Zion. In the revelations recorded in sections 51 through 57, the Lord appointed and instructed people to handle these tasks. But while skills and such things are needed in Zion, these revelations also teach that the Lord desires his saints to become spiritually worthy, to be called a Zion people, his people. He calls each of us to be a faithful, a just and a wise steward or co-host. Good job, John. Having a contrite spirit standing fast in our appointed responsibilities, if we can do that regardless of our temporal skills, the Lord can use us to build Zion. I’ve noticed this theme is becoming stronger and stronger in the Doctrine & Covenants, building Zion. So Emily, how do you wanna start this? Do we need to go back and get some background?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:11:09 Let’s get some background. I think about this brand new fledgling church. They come out of New York. There’s a couple hundred members, and the first missionary effort takes them through Ohio. Those first missionaries are on their way to Missouri to try to preach to the Indians, because these are religious seeking kind of people who have probably bounced around between churches. Some of them stop in to see their old minister in the Kirtland area. Now they’re just having a conversation with old friends. Some of them get baptized very, very quickly. They hear the missionaries teach and the next day they’re in the water. Others of them are gonna take a minute. In that group, you have people like Edward Partridge and Sidney Rigdon, Edward and Sidney actually traveled to New York to meet Joseph. They want to know is this guy for real? They meet him, and at the same time, Joseph then has revelations and says, go to the Ohio. What’s so interesting for me is that there’s this utopian movement going on in the United States. Lots of people are joining utopian groups. You have the Shakers that are headquartered in the Cleveland area, even down to like Isaac Morley and the group in Kirtland that are trying to live communally.

Hank Smith: 00:12:31 It’s happening a lot.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:12:32 It’s happening a lot. Everybody is doing this. I imagine some of them show up thinking, well, it’s another utopian community, and if I like this one better, I’ll stick with this one. Joseph is always thinking bigger. Utopian community is one thing. That’s fine. We’re going for the kingdom of God. In these first months in Kirtland, it’s really how do we build the kingdom of God? And you have a bunch of random people. You have farmers and hat makers and blacksmiths, all of these guys. Okay, kingdom of God, let’s do this. No idea what that means.

Hank Smith: 00:13:11 Yeah. A bunch of new people saying, let’s go. Let’s move forward.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:13:14 You get guys in their twenties, you get guys in their fifties, this range of people who have never done this before. They don’t know how God speaks, but they’re gonna go anyway.

Hank Smith: 00:13:24 Yeah, and Joseph Smith himself is what? 25? We can’t forget that. Like imagine Sidney Rigdon meeting him going, he’s 25. Okay.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:13:36 And he’s uneducated. So Sidney Rigdon is this polished, professional, very intelligent preacher who has studied the Bible, who knows a lot, who has thought deeply about theology. He is somehow convinced by this 25-year-old kid. Yeah. Who just shows up and says, God speaks to me and I’m going to redo the entire theology of Christianity. Let’s go.

Hank Smith: 00:14:03 Yeah. Sidney Rigdon, I think is 10, 15 years older than him, and you’re right. If you would say, who’s gonna be the prophet? If you’ve just met the two, you’d be like, oh, it’s gotta be Sidney. And yet it’s this 25-year-old farmer, like you said, not fully educated. He’s not dumb. He’s a smart person, but just not educated.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:14:25 So on paper, he is not the person to lead a communal organization. He digs wells for a living.

John Bytheway: 00:14:33 Right?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:14:34 makes barrels. You know about other families. There’s a branch of the church from Colesville, New York that has joined. They’re led by a man named Joseph Knight, who’s also a little older, a little wiser, who puts his own reputation on the line to join this. He and all of the brand new Latter-day Saints agree to follow Joseph, and the revelation calls them to Ohio. I went to school in Cleveland and I’m from Utah. Why would I do that? And I read in the Doctrine & Covenants to go to the Ohio. So God will endow you with power from on high.

Hank Smith: 00:15:08 Okay.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:15:09 Doctrine & Covenants says to do it. So

Hank Smith: 00:15:11 That’s you really

Sister Emily Utt: 00:15:12 Like in scriptures and go, and I will go to the Ohio.

Hank Smith: 00:15:14 Go to Ohio.

John Bytheway: 00:15:16 It’s so amazing to me. We talk about Joseph not formally educated, the followers, these early ones, they were not just gullible fools. They were smart people. Why would they do that? Unless there’s really a spiritual confirmation of what they’re doing.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:15:33 And I think too, a personal striving, they’re looking for something that’s going to change their lives. Building Zion, building the kingdom of God is not an easy proposition. It will ask everything of you.

John Bytheway: 00:15:47 Everything you’ve got. Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:15:48 Everything you have and moving is the easy part.

John Bytheway: 00:15:53 Ugh, which is so hard.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:15:57 You’re asked to change your very heart. Learning how to live together in peace and learning how to overcome selfishness and your own interest and thinking that you know more than this kid. That’s the real point of Zion. When God says, build my kingdom, he doesn’t mean until it’s hard. He means, build my kingdom, give me everything you have, and then give a little more and fight through and push through. When you are truly ready, God will redeem you.

Hank Smith: 00:16:33 Yeah. Wow. Emily, since we have you here and you’re a historian for the church, let’s take advantage of that. So the sections we’re looking at are June and July of 1831. Let’s pass that for just a second. Tell us what’s going to happen in the next few years and then we’ll come back. We move to Ohio and then what?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:16:53 Within a few weeks of moving to Ohio, God says, I am going to build a literal Zion, a literal New Jerusalem. The place, the center place, Kirtland is your temporary stopping point. It will be a stake of Zion, but it is not the center place of Zion. Congratulations. Some of you that just got to Ohio are now moving to Missouri.

John Bytheway: 00:17:17 I know

Sister Emily Utt: 00:17:19 That is the place where God will come and he will greet his people at the second coming.

Hank Smith: 00:17:24 Wow.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:17:25 So we need to go and get Zion ready. The physical Zion ready for God to come.

Hank Smith: 00:17:31 And how far away is that compared to our move from New York to Ohio?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:17:37 This move is very different. The move from New York to Ohio, they have roads, they have a canal

Hank Smith: 00:17:44 All after that. Yeah, they have roads. Oh man.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:17:48 They have a boat. So when the saints move from New York to Ohio, they take the Erie Canal to Lake Erie and then take a boat and then just walk the last few miles. When God says, go to Missouri, he means good luck. Figure it out. There’s no canal. If you can make it to a river, maybe, hopefully there’s a river boat that will get you there. Or maybe you’ll have to build a boat, or maybe you can get a horse, or maybe you can walk. Kirtland. There are settlements here. There are stores there, a town. There are people. So Edward Partridge is living in Paynesville. That’s a settlement. That’s a community. There’s a village there. When they go to Missouri, there’s an intersection. There is nothing.

  00:18:42 Oh. So you can imagine many of these saints, like Edward Partridge is very prosperous. They’re living in a fine big house. Their lives are fairly easy. And when God tells him to go to Missouri, he gives everything up. And then he shows up in that town and it is lawless and frontier in the middle of nowhere. So imagine now build a house. Now they have to figure out where in the world are we going to get anything? I’m gonna have to go another a hundred miles back up river to find glass for the windows. It’s just a totally different land. The other challenge you have in Missouri is that it is a part of the country that’s pretty unsettled. It’s on the edge of the frontier. If you go further west, you are out of the country. You’re in full Indian territory. The only people that live further west from that are Indians or fur trappers.

  00:19:37 There’s nothing out there. It’s mountain men. It’s unknown. Lewis and Clark just wrapped up. This is a new, new place. What’s interesting about that then is that as they’re building Zion, they’re literally building a community. They’re laying out streets. They’re building this town. And then trouble start, because you now have hundreds of people who think and believe and act the same way, churning up in an area where there are a multitude of opinions. And we immediately have conflict. In the years where we’re in Kirtland and things are kind of calm, and we can build a temple and we can practice Zion there. In Missouri, they are constantly on the move. They live in like four different places, just trying to find a place that is peaceful enough to build a home.

Hank Smith: 00:20:29 Wow. And they happen at the same time.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:20:32 Yeah. You’ll hear a lot in the next sections of the Doctrine & Covenants, Joseph Smith and other church leaders are traveling back and forth. They’re in Kirtland. They get a letter from Missouri. Then they have to go to Missouri and deal with the issue. And while they’re in Missouri, they hear about an issue back home in Kirtland. They’re just going back and forth. These revelations are happening while they’re on the move. You’ll notice in these sections, there’s a gap of some time because it takes Joseph like three weeks to travel from Ohio to Missouri, which is what, a eight or nine hour drive now?

Hank Smith: 00:21:06 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:21:07 We do this in a day for Joseph. This is three weeks. What do you do when you have two communities going at once?

Hank Smith: 00:21:14 Yeah, and they’re pretty far apart. They can’t email each other.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:21:19 They don’t even have telegraph. This is horseback. This is steamboat.

Hank Smith: 00:21:25 If you want an answer from Joseph Smith, it’s gonna be months.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:21:29 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 00:21:29 If you write a letter.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:21:31 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:21:32 We are so used to shooting off a message.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:21:35 We need an answer today. I think about somebody was mean to me at church today, and I can go talk to my bishop right after church and get it sorted out. You can’t do that in Missouri in 1831. You have to work through it.

Hank Smith: 00:21:50 They’re figuring it out. Wow. If I was looking at this almost like a visual, we have one line New York, and then we split into two. ’cause we have two church centers, Ohio and Missouri. But then we all end up in Missouri.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:22:07 We all end up in Missouri for just a few months.

Hank Smith: 00:22:11 Okay. So what happens in Kirtland.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:22:13 The Saints build the temple in 1836 and dedicate that by 1837, the church is starting to get involved a little bit more in domestic tax kinds of things. Joseph Smith starts a bank, and then the panic of 1837 happens. The United States goes into a recession. Now, church members who are entering the bank, because Joseph Smith is the prophet and told them it’s a good idea, they’ve now lost their money. It’s not a safe place in Kirtland. So suddenly in 1837 and 1838, there is an immense season of saints leaving and some of those saints get pretty antagonistic about the church writing letters, publishing things in the newspaper, trying to convince people that those Joseph followers are up to no good. They took my money, they’ve forced me to move. How dare they. To relieve the tension Joseph moves to Missouri and the saints that are staying faithful move with him. But that doesn’t last long because he ends up in 1838, 39 in Liberty jail because all the conflicts that are happening in Missouri are going very badly, too. Tensions with the neighbors are rising. By 1839, all of those saints who had moved to Missouri are now picking up again and moving back east a little bit to Illinois. So by 1839, they’re in what would become Nauvoo.

Hank Smith: 00:23:47 Emily. Thank you. You walked us through Ohio to Nauvoo and gave us some things to look forward to. So now let’s go back to these sections. We’ve been in Ohio just a few months. We’ve identified Zion. Can we hold in on to section 51, 52? Should we go there now?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:24:06 Let’s do it.

Hank Smith: 00:24:07 Okay.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:24:08 What I found really interesting as I studied these sections this time is this idea of how in the world do we learn to live together?

John Bytheway: 00:24:17 That was the topic of family night, just the other night. Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:24:23 How do we do this? So there are bits of this that are things we need to do internally to be called God’s people. And then there are things we need to do externally to be called God’s people. And I see in these sections that combination of both a phrase that really stuck out to me this time, I didn’t even go back and count. I should have. How many times the Lord commanded them to have a contrite spirit. It came up over and over and over again in almost every single one of these sections. The only way this is going to work is if you are humble, contrite, and you listen to me.

Hank Smith: 00:25:05 Can we define contrite for those of us who are going, am I contrite?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:25:10 I actually got back into the Hebrew.

Hank Smith: 00:25:12 Oh, okay.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:25:14 Contrite is the same word used in Isaiah 53 talking about Christ. For he was bruised for our iniquities is the same word as contrite. A contrite heart is one that is bruised. It is humbled. It knows that the only strength and power I have is from God. A contrite heart to me is a constantly repentant heart. A heart that is always churning to God, always changing, always looking at God. What else do you want from me? For me, a contrite heart is a heart that’s trying to become like Christ’s heart, always seeking to do the will of God.

John Bytheway: 00:26:02 I remember reading that the idea of contrition is like being crushed. That idea appears so often. The broken heart, the contrite spirit, that the sacrifice God requires is a broken heart and contrite spirit. And I love what you said, Emily. This will work if. If you go in thinking, I’m ambitious, I’m gonna build my property. I’m gonna be more about me. It won’t work. But I love what is in verse nine. Let every man deal honestly, be alike among this people, receive alike that you may be one even as I have commanded you. Otherwise it won’t work.

Hank Smith: 00:26:40 I’m looking at these sections. You’re right. I’m seeing over and over. I’m just marking it with a little green highlighter. If they’re contrite before me, you shall have power to give the Holy Spirit. Wo unto you poor men whose hearts are not broken, whose spirits are not contrite, whose bellies are not satisfied. The next one, whose spirits are contrite for they shall see the kingdom of God. He that prayeth, whose spirit is contrite, the same is accepted of me. He that speaketh, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifieth, the same is of God. It is, it’s over and over.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:27:15 I love in section 52: 15 and 16. Wherefore, he that prayeth, whose spirit is contrite the same is accepted of me. If he obey my ordinances, he that speaketh, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifieth, the same is of God. If he obey my ordinances, there’s this connection here that if we need a humble and a bruised and a broken heart, and we need to speak well of others, and we need to be obedient, that’s the only way Zion’s going to happen. That’s the only way our wards are going to function today. That if we come into a Sunday school lesson or a sacrament meeting talk to show everyone how much smarter we are, or we have all the answers, or if we walk into church thinking we know better than our bishop, we’re going to get into trouble. But if we walk into church saying, Bishop, I don’t like what you did there, but let’s talk through it and find a way to God together. Or, I really didn’t love that thing you said in Sunday School, let’s talk and learn to understand each other. That’s Zion.

Hank Smith: 00:28:27 I love that. Whose language is meek and edifies. How do you speak? Do you build in the way you speak of others and to others.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:28:37 It’s so easy to tear down, especially these Kirtland revelations. These people are being asked to do some very hard things and they’re being asked to give up the things that had made them successful to seek something higher. That’s hard. And if you can find a way to speak well of somebody else, you’re going to be so much better.

Hank Smith: 00:28:57 I like what you said earlier, the moving’s the easy part. Not that it’s easy, but it is the easier part of becoming Zion. Moving to Zion, pretty straightforward becoming Zion. That’s gonna take a while. It’s gonna take a lot of stretching. There’s this story, I, I don’t know who it is. I think Brigham Young is speaking to someone who is trying to make a little money off of Zion. The quote is, whose kingdom are you trying to build? Your own or the Lord’s? Almost as if you can’t do both.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:29:29 A few years ago when we were working on the St. George Temple, we found some of the carpenters had written poetry and stuck it in the walls of the temple, which is really cool.

Hank Smith: 00:29:38 Wow.

John Bytheway: 00:29:39 Wow. How cool.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:29:41 Two of them wrote their family history down. One of them forgot to write down one of his daughters, which is awkward. I’m sure he loved her.

Hank Smith: 00:29:49 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:29:50 But my favorite was a poem by a relatively new convert of the church. He had joined the church in 1872, and in 1876, he’s now in St. George working as a carpenter. He’s a storekeeper. He has no business being in St. George in the wall of the temple. Let me just read you this poem. He said, whatever be my failings and desires to thee, oh Lord, my heart, be firm and true. Thy law, my law, whatever God requires this be my hope, his loving will to do and whatsoever I love with act or breath. If I should love thee less than how I can remember me, oh Lord, in life or death as one that ever loves his fellow man.

John Bytheway: 00:30:33 Wow.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:30:34 That’s by a man named Joseph Townsend who wrote other hymns that people know and love and sing every week in church that encapsulates that idea of a contrite heart becoming Zion. The I am going to fail all the time, but remember God that I tried. I tried to love people more than I loved my own interest.

Hank Smith: 00:30:57 Did you say you found that?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:30:59 We found that in the walls of the St. George Temple.

Hank Smith: 00:31:01 So he wasn’t writing it. Hey, I’ll get famous here, publish a great poem. This one was to God.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:31:08 That was his prayer in the wall of the temple.

Hank Smith: 00:31:10 He wasn’t thinking there’s gonna be a podcast in 2025 that yeah, they’re gonna read that. Yeah. Yeah. What a beautiful thing.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:31:19 I like to think, if I got to leave something in the wall of the temple, what would I leave? What would be my testimony? Just to God.

Hank Smith: 00:31:28 I’m jealous of your job. Which I don’t think is Zion so I have to check myself there.

John Bytheway: 00:31:34 I like Emily that you said that. I tried. I’m trying. We have talked a lot, Hank, haven’t we, about the difference between being willing and able.

Hank Smith: 00:31:44 Mm-hmm.

John Bytheway: 00:31:44 Because we’re not called able very often. Yeah. God is able, we can be willing. That’s it. We just keep trying.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:31:51 I love then in section 52 where he starts calling all these missionaries. Some of them accept the call, some of them don’t, and some of them have new assignments made because some of them received a call and said, I don’t wanna go to Missouri. Or some of them got the call and said, does that really have to be my companion?

John Bytheway: 00:32:12 Okay.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:32:13 Can’t I go with that other guy? He’s a little better. They’re working through this. We’re all doing that same thing. We get a calling from God and we’re like, but did you mean that? Isn’t there a different way? Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:32:25 I’m in. Yeah. Now go to Missouri. Ooh. Ooh.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:32:28 That’s no.

Hank Smith: 00:32:29 Yeah, I mean when I said I was in, I meant like in meaning I’m gonna stay here in Ohio and I have that same attitude. Ugh.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:32:39 I think this happens this section because the Colesville Saints in Section 51 are being asked to move to a man named Leman Copley’s farm. Right. He had been a Shaker. He joins the church. He’s all gung ho. Section 49 is the section to the Shakers and Leman Copley is with them, and they go read that section to his congregation.

John Bytheway: 00:33:01 Yikes.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:33:01 It doesn’t go well.

John Bytheway: 00:33:02 It doesn’t go well.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:33:03 And suddenly Leman is now like, no.

Hank Smith: 00:33:06 I’m not in.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:33:08 I’m not in. I was so excited to have you live on my farm, but this is too hard. You’re asking me to choose. And he kicks them off his farm. The aftermath of section 49, that section to the Shakers is the saints from Colesville who moved to Ohio with such faith now being commanded to move on because they don’t have a place to live anymore.

John Bytheway: 00:33:30 Hadn’t they started improving the land and the Copley farm building fences and things. They had already put some sweat equity in improving it and then had to leave. And it’s beautiful out there.

Hank Smith: 00:33:44 I noticed a phrase and four years ago, John, we were studying this. This was pointed out in section 51, verse 17, I think, is that to the saints on Copley’s farm, he says, and the hour and the day is not given unto them. Wherefore, let them act upon this land as for years, almost like the Lord is saying, as if you’re gonna be here for years. It’s almost like he knew.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:34:08 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:34:08 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 00:34:10 He knew that Copley was going to back out, but he didn’t say so right here. He just said, yes, stay on this farm as if you’re gonna be here a long time. Like, wait, what do you mean as if we’re gonna be here for a long time?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:34:24 There’s this great quote from Brigham Young where he talks about if you wait for Zion to happen before you start building it, you’ll never be ready for Zion. Build the Zion you want to live in. And then if you have to leave a week later, guess what? You are Zion and the principles you learned go with you. The physical part of Zion should be the easy part, like build a farm, build something beautiful because it will teach you the skills to be ready for God’s kingdom. The saints at Leman Copley’s farm. You might be there 10 years, you might be there a week, but live your life as if you’re going to be here forever. Because if you’re gonna be here a hundred years, in a hundred years, you’ll have that tree planted. That’s beautiful. But if you’re here a week, you’ll still have learned what Zion looks like.

Hank Smith: 00:35:13 Yeah. John, you’ve taught me a phrase. God gets his work done through the people and he gets his people done through the work.

John Bytheway: 00:35:23 Yeah. That was a saying, and I don’t know where he got it from my beloved Mission President Menlo F. Smith used to say, the Lord gets the work done through his people and his people done through the work. All these things they’re going through are refining them.

Hank Smith: 00:35:39 I think that’s what you’re saying, Emily, right, is in building Zion, you become it.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:35:44 It doesn’t matter where you live because Zion will go with you. It’s you. It is that thing itself. What I love, even studying like historic tabernacles of the church or historic temples like the Salt Lake temple. Imagine if they showed up in 1853, in 1854 and said, alright, I’m gonna give you one day in 10 for the next six months, and then my turn on the temple is finished, or my turn on the tabernacle is finished and I’ll let somebody else finish it. We would still be building the Salt Lake temple if we had lived with that attitude for these saints. You build the building and then you find God in it. So they can sit in that tabernacle and look up in that building and go, I built this. I helped build it. And now generations after me will know God because of me. Wow. That kind of connection that the things we do right now may not seem significant to us, but if we do them well, it will bless generations to come.

Hank Smith: 00:36:45 Yeah. And I bet you feel that Emily, as you walk through these buildings.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:36:49 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:36:50 Do you feel them?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:36:51 Well, I mean, I know their names. I know their pictures. I joke that I could probably tell which ones I’d be friends with and which ones would be a little harder for me personally to get along with. I mean, any of us that can visit a sacred place that you can feel that kind of connection, that sense that they did this for us, even if they never lived to see it completed. The saints that helped build the Kirtland temple were there for just a few months after, and then left. The Saints that built the Nauvoo temple and were endowed and then just walked away.

Hank Smith: 00:37:25 But Zion was them.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:37:27 Zion was them. The power of the sealing covenant went with them.

Hank Smith: 00:37:31 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:37:32 So the power of the endowment went with them across the plains and gave them the strength they needed to keep going and keep moving and then build it again and build another temple, and then build another temple. Forgive and move on and work hard and do it again and again and again. These revelations that feel so distant in time from us are very present because be a just and wise steward. Have a broken heart. Serve me, help build the kingdom, move, accept that mission call. Do those things and Zion will go with you.

Hank Smith: 00:38:14 I have a comment and a question in section 51 verse nine. The Lord says, let every man deal honestly and be alike among this people and receive alike that you may be one. That is a phrase from John 17, the great intercessory prayer. Here’s the Lord heading to his atoning sacrifice in the garden and on the cross. He’s praying for you and I, for the apostles, for everyone who believes on the apostles. And this is his prayer that they may be one. If I’m the adversary, and that’s the Savior’s one prayer, and I know what I’m going to do. I’m gonna seek to divide. When we think of Satan controlling the earth, it’s division, war, people against people.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:39:06 The signs of the times that scare me the most are the ones that say people will be divided against each other. Because when we are united in purpose and united in love, you are unstoppable as a society. But when you are pointing fingers or saying, well, if that guy would’ve done a better job, we wouldn’t be in this mess. That’s when problems happen.

Hank Smith: 00:39:31 Yeah. John, what does the Lord frequently say to the saints about Joseph? Your eyes…

John Bytheway: 00:39:36 It’s coming up in 67, your eyes have been upon Joseph and his language you have known and his imperfections you have known. This also you have known, but read the revelations. There’s no imperfection in them. Yeah. I just love the idea. You’re looking at the wrong thing guys. If you’re trying to find imperfection in Joseph, you’ll find it.

Hank Smith: 00:39:55 In the Book of Mormon. It’s stir their souls up in anger against that which is good. Fault finding.

John Bytheway: 00:40:04 There’s online tools for stirring today. What are we upset about today? Let’s check my feed, right?

Hank Smith: 00:40:10 Yep. Isn’t this awful? Yeah, it’s awful. Let’s all gang up on this person and attack them.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:40:17 52 verse four. Inasmuch as they are faithful unto me, it shall be made known unto them what they shall do. And inasmuch as they are not faithful, they shall be cut off even as I will as seemeth me good. So if we are faithful, God will lead us. And if we are not, we will be cut off. It’s the great pride that all of us deal with in these sections. I see a lot of this. When we are turning to God, he will deliver us. I love in section 56, the fatness of the Earth will be ours. We will have everything. But if we are disobedient, if we are prideful, if we stir up contention, if we try to make God do our will,

Hank Smith: 00:41:01 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:41:01 We will be cut off. It will fail. If we’re trying to get God to conform to our will, this whole thing is not gonna happen. But if we go to his will, the fatness of the earth is happening.

Hank Smith: 00:41:16 And can you trust that Emily, with these missionaries, he’s calling them in pairs here. What’s he calling them to do? Is this the mission to Missouri? The one we haven’t been there yet.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:41:28 This mission in Missouri is really to help set up this society and the kingdom that’s coming. The first missionaries have already been to Missouri. They’ve scouted out what’s happening. But this group is really going to organize to physically get Zion ready. And you need a whole lot of people with a whole variety of skills to show up to get the city ready so the rest of the saints can follow along behind.

Hank Smith: 00:41:58 Oh, okay. So already there, I think, if I remember right, is Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, John, help me out.

John Bytheway: 00:42:05 Ziba Peterson, and was it Peter Whitmer Jr.

Hank Smith: 00:42:09 Okay. So they’re already out there and the Lord is saying, okay, let’s take more out there.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:42:14 Yeah. So the scouting party is gone, and now the advance company is on its way. Okay, we’re gonna lay out the city, we’re gonna buy some land. We’re gonna set up a store, we’re gonna start getting something. So when the rest of the saints arrive, they’re not showing up to nothing. They have a place to go to.

Hank Smith: 00:42:34 The Lord says, Thomas, you’re with Ezra. Edward, you’re with Martin. Sidney and Joseph, you’re together. David, you’re with Harvey. Parley you’re with Orson. When I read this with my boys, it’s not just a bunch of names. It’s you two are going together and you’re walking to Missouri.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:42:52 And preach the gospel along the way, by the way, so it’s this idea that you have the priesthood, you have been called of God. So no matter where you are, open your mouth. Don’t just go to Zion, take Zion with you, find converts, find people, and along the way, preach the word of God. Find those pure in heart, those people that are ready to join. Then Zion will not only be in you, but Zion will be in the traveling company and on that entire journey West.

Hank Smith: 00:43:27 John, when I’ve given church history tours, this is June , I would, if the Lord’s saying, Hey, I want you to walk to Missouri, I’d be like, can’t I wait till September? Right. It’s…

John Bytheway: 00:43:37 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:43:38 It’s a little bit nicer weather.

John Bytheway: 00:43:40 When it’s hot in Missouri. Ooh, it’s really warm.

Hank Smith: 00:43:43 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:43:45 I’m looking at my late father’s scriptures, and I’m seeing, by the way, highlighted in verse 8, 9, 10, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 27. Preach by the way, preach by the way. Preach by the way. So I know Smith shows up a lot in restoration history. There’s a few by the way, by the way, along the way.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:44:06 Section 52 is yours. Congratulations.

John Bytheway: 00:44:09 Yeah. It’s got a lot of by the way in there, I’m like, yeah, my dad marked ’em all. It’s funny.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:44:15 I also love, in this revelation, he tells them what to preach. In verses nine, and then I think in 36, let them journey from hence preaching the word by the way, saying none other things than that which the prophets and apostles have written and that which is taught them by the Comforter through the prayer of faith. And he says that again in verse 36. You teach the apostles and the prophets, you don’t teach your own doctrine. You don’t teach the thing that you brought with you when you joined us from the Shakers or the Campbellites. You don’t preach Sidney Rigdon’s church. You preach the prophet.

John Bytheway: 00:44:52 Interesting. Good insight.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:44:54 And then of section 53, I think he goes into a little bit more detail in verse three, in the revelation to Sidney Gilbert, take upon you my ordination, even that of an Elder to preach faith and repentance and remission of sins according to my word, and the reception of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands.

John Bytheway: 00:45:12 First principles right there.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:45:14 You teach the basics because the basics is how Zion happens. You preach faith in God, you preach repentance, you preach… So repentance you preach that churning, you preach humility, preach that God will forgive you of all of the things that are keeping you from him. That is the word of the prophet. That’s what’s going to get you to Zion, and that’s what’s gonna get you converted.

Hank Smith: 00:45:41 I’ve joked with my students that when Jesus comes again, and you’re not quite sure if it’s him, see what he talks about first, right? If he starts with, I have a message about faith, repentance, and baptism, you can go, okay, it’s him. That’s what he speaks about.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:45:58 I’m not gonna be ready for the deep doctrine because I’m still figuring out faith, repentance, and baptism. Right? Until I get that done. Really understanding faith and repentance is the deepest thing we can know.

Hank Smith: 00:46:11 Emily, how does this mission go? We can’t go through all of these companionships, but do they just take off and go? They just, they’re like, okay, here we go.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:46:22 Some of them do and some of them don’t. There’s actually some of the other sections in this, this group of scriptures this week. Some of them deny the call, say, I’m not going, and so some of them actually get new assignments. God’s like, okay, well, you said no, so now I’m going to give your calling to somebody else. This section is a verse that a friend taught me back when I was a student in Ohio that has stuck with me about how we do this in verse 33 of section 52, yea verily I say, let all these take their journey into one place in their several courses, and one man shall not build upon another’s foundation, nor journey on another’s track. I love that verse because I remember as a young, timid missionary, I was gonna be so like, don’t make me talk to people. I’ll just follow along and my companion and I will join another companionship. I’ll let them do all the talking.

Hank Smith: 00:47:16 Right.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:47:17 And imagine if that had happened in their journey to Missouri. Now you have 30 missionaries all traveling together and not actually talking to anybody.

Hank Smith: 00:47:25 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:47:26 For me, that idea of do not travel in another’s, try it out, spread it out. For me as a coalition, that was really meaningful because I saw everybody around me having these grand ideas, you know, the only way to be successful in life is if you’re a doctor or a lawyer, or I’m gonna start a tech company and I’m gonna change the world, and me, little history major, I’m like, I’m gonna go take my Shakespeare comedy class now. I don’t know, and I felt such weight and pressure and guilt because I wasn’t interested in that same track. That reminder for me as a college student was, it doesn’t matter how you get there. The goal is Zion, don’t copy another guy because his path seems to be the right path. Take your own path.

Hank Smith: 00:48:16 And they’re all gonna end up in the same place. But take your path.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:48:20 Yeah, find your own way. Don’t compare yourself that my path is not getting me somewhere because it’s not Joseph’s path or Sidney Rigdon’s path. Find my own path. Those that accepted the call got to Missouri. They just spread out and they touched people’s lives in different ways.

Hank Smith: 00:48:41 Emily, since we have you here, I’m gonna read off some of these names and if you wanna talk about some of them, we can’t talk about all of them, but we’ve got Thomas B. Marsh, Ezra Thayre. Ezra Booth I know becomes an interesting character. Isaac Morley, we’ve talked about him. Edward Partridge, who’s my restoration hero, Martin Harris, we definitely have talked about him. Harvey Whitlock, David Whitmer, I don’t know. Harvey Whitlock, Parley Pratt. Orson Pratt. We’ve at least talked about Parley quite a bit. Solomon Hancock, Simeon Carter, Edson Fuller, Jacob Scott, Levi Hancock. We’ve mentioned him. I won’t go all the way through. Is there anyone in here you want to talk about Emily as a historian? Anyone come to life?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:49:21 What I love about these, they are such a diverse group of people. Harvey Whitlock is younger than Joseph, which is saying something, if you could be younger, Edward Partridge is wildly successful, a decade older. Even among that other group, Lyman White, who would go on to become an apostle is about the same age as Edward Partridge, John Murdoch. This is the man whose wife died giving birth to twins. Just at the same time that Emma Smith lost twins at birth, Emma and Joseph adopt Joseph Murdoch’s twins. That’s that story that will become relevant in a few years. Thomas B. Marsh is about five years older than Joseph, goes on to be a significant leader in the church. Some of these men are faithful all the way to Utah. Some of them learn and find a way and stick with it. Some of them, Edward Partridge gave up so much for the church dies in Nauvoo.

  00:50:25 Newell Knight dies on the journey west to Utah. Some of these men don’t survive the doctrinal tussle that happens when the Kirtland bank fails and leaves the church in 1837. The more you study these men, the more you see. These are people that are very much just like us. These are normal, common, average folks, and some of them go on to names that are writ large in church history, and some just kind of fade away. One of them, Simonds Ryder, we hear his name a little bit. He flames bright and then burns out very, very quickly. He’s joining the church in June, 1831, and by September he’s out. It’s just too much, so you get this whole diversity of people. If Simonds Ryder flames out, your Edward Partridges burn slow and steady and calm. Then you have a Sidney Rigdon who goes through terrible things later on in Kirtland, and because of his early allegiance to Joseph. Joseph keeps him because he is such an influential, wonderful voice. He ends up in Liberty, has a probably a traumatic brain injury from the tar and feathering at the Johnson Farm. These are amazing people, but again, very much common, normal farmers, bookkeepers, the standard folk.

Hank Smith: 00:52:01 And then to be paired up with someone, we do that in our church. Luckily, I get paired up with John Bytheway quite a bit. I don’t know if it’s lucky for him, but it’s lucky for me, but I can see Solomon saying, Simeon snores. That’s gonna be a long trip. John, I really like you, but I like Sara more and if they said, you’re gonna be gone here for the next couple of months, I’d think, oh, I’m gonna leave my family.

John Bytheway: 00:52:28 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:52:29 And maybe middle of the summer I’ve got work.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:52:33 You want me to do what? With who?

Hank Smith: 00:52:36 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:52:38 Some mission companions you are just best friends with, and you love them your whole life, and others are tremendous learning opportunities, chances for growth. You have all of that and that these are people with jobs. They’re now being asked to leave their work. Most of them are married. They have children, and there’s even a risk that because this is the frontier, maybe they don’t come back. Maybe you get cholera on the way. Maybe your boat capsizes, maybe something goes terribly wrong. So what we think of as a nice easy, oh, I’m just driving a few hours for these people. This is, this may be life and death at all times. What am I willing to do?

Hank Smith: 00:53:24 Yeah. So when we see those who couldn’t do it, let’s be careful in the way we…

John Bytheway: 00:53:28 Right.

Hank Smith: 00:53:30 Well, I would’ve done it. Would you? Would you have done it? Because they don’t know how this is gonna work out.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:53:35 And then they’re out there in the Missouri heat. Whenever I’m in Missouri in August and July, I’m like, is this really Zion? This feels

Hank Smith: 00:53:43 Me too.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:53:44 painful.

Hank Smith: 00:53:46 Oh yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:53:46 And tempers flare. You get out there, you’re a long way from home, you’re probably tired and hungry and your feet hurt.

Hank Smith: 00:53:53 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:53:54 Then you run into somebody who’s yelling at you, and I don’t know if I could keep my calm and be Christlike when my mission companion is snoring way too loud.

Hank Smith: 00:54:03 Yeah. You’ve gotten on my nerves after a while and I say something in anger and, oh,

Sister Emily Utt: 00:54:11 Can you stop chewing your food? You’re just annoying me.

Hank Smith: 00:54:16 Oh, John, you’re so good with that. I know I annoy you and you just smile and nod.

John Bytheway: 00:54:24 I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yeah. If I snore. I was looking at verse 30. I just thought that we should mention Reynolds Cahoon. I had a Cahoon roommate at BYU and a lot of these Cahoons settled up in Alberta. Reynolds Cahoon is the one whose son was named what? Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:54:47 Mahonri Moriancumer .

John Bytheway: 00:54:49 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:54:50 We talked about this a lot last year. Yeah. This is just such a fun story. And then remember the other couple said, uh, we’re okay not getting a blessing or maybe blessed by Joseph. We’re gonna go out. Yeah, right after they hear that one. Mahonri Moriancumer. Emily, thanks for bringing this to life, because you might read these and just think these are just names. I can see my boys going through this and just saying, do I have to read all these? Just a bunch of names, but when you stop, you like, these are people, they’re real people with jobs and families and fears.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:55:22 Yeah. A lot of these names are on the Joseph Smith Papers website, so there’s biographical sketches of a lot of people mentioned in the Doctrine & Covenants. If listeners are interested in learning more about them, they can go to the Joseph Smith Papers and get little snippets, and if you’re lucky, a photograph and actually get a sense of who they are. Then you have a competition of who had the best beard and who really needed a haircut. Right. And all of that.

John Bytheway: 00:55:49 The resources that we have today are so incredible, aren’t they? We recently attended something at the Church History Library as they showed us some of the resources available to everybody, to anybody who has an internet connection to go on and read these little bios and make this all real.

Hank Smith: 00:56:08 Emily, how much content is available for the historians of the church?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:56:14 I could spend the rest of my life reading every document of the church history library and still not get through it all.

John Bytheway: 00:56:20 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:56:21 Yeah. It’s amazing. You can go look it up and you can read it for yourself.

Hank Smith: 00:56:27 The actual document, right?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:56:29 Yeah. You can hold the actual thing. Kind of. And know these people, and not only Joseph, but so many of these others, the Edward Partridge Papers have been published and the Wilford Woodruff Papers are being published, and you can learn about them from them, which is just remarkable.

John Bytheway: 00:56:48 Yeah. Emily, I’m glad you’re talking about this because I think we might get the impression that, oh, the little library app on my phone is the same. Almost every time you look at it, something else has been added.

Hank Smith: 00:57:04 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:57:04 There’s something new, or things have been reorganized a little bit, and they are still in the process, as you just said, of doing more, even making it searchable. So people should go in there and spend some time. Look at what’s there because they might not even be aware of what’s there. It’ll change next month.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:57:25 Mm-hmm and I love so many of those resources. I know the people that write them. These are faithful Latter-day Saints, and these are scholars. It’s so wonderful to see them combining these two aspects of themselves and finding faithful ways to talk about really complex, complicated human stories that are accurate.

John Bytheway: 00:57:50 They’re trustworthy. That’s another good thing about that. They’re scholars and you can trust what they’re gonna say, and they’re being transparent. They’re telling it like it is. Like you said, complicated, difficult lives of people, their ups and downs. Good thing we’re not complicated at all, and we don’t have any ups and downs, huh?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:58:07 So black and white and straightforward I am.

John Bytheway: 00:58:09 Right.

Hank Smith: 00:58:10 A hundred percent good every second. Emily, this has been fantastic so far. I love it when these people come to life. Their names are in black and white, but you’re helping us see this in color, which is really fun. John Emily is very busy. She’s not able to listen to a lot of podcasts, but her brother Kevin, does listen to a few. Emily, I extended the invitation and you, did you send a text to Kevin? Is that what happened?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:58:40 I texted him right as I got the email from you. He called me about one minute later, like breathless with excitement.

Hank Smith: 00:58:48 And that pushed you over. You said, okay, I gotta do it.

Sister Emily Utt: 00:58:50 I mean, I have to earn some credit in the family to appear on a podcast. So

Hank Smith: 00:58:56 Yeah. So Kevin, we know you work at BYU. We gotta tell you we love you, and thank you for getting Emily on our show. It’s been fantastic so far.

John Bytheway: 00:59:05 Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:59:06 So Emily, we still have some more sections to cover. 54 through 57. What do you want to do?

Sister Emily Utt: 00:59:11 I like to ask this question about these sections. What in the world do store clerks and printers have to do with Zion? Zion is this doctrine, Zion is the pure in heart. Why in the world are we now talking about agents purchasing land and getting licenses and getting a clerk? I like to think about how much of life Zion encompasses. Zion is the kingdom of God. What matters to God in his kingdom. I love in section 51, they talk about we’re gonna build storehouses. We’re going to take care of the poor because that is Zion. In section 55, WW Phelps and Oliver Cowdery are commanded to select books for children’s education. What in the world does that have to do with Zion? This is decades before the creation of the church’s youth programs. You don’t get primary until the 1870s, and you don’t get young men and young women until the 1870. In 1831 God is reminding his people that the next generation of saints needs to start learning now.

  01:00:28 Don’t wait until they’re a grownup to teach them how to live in Zion. Start them at a young age. I love in section 55 verse four, and again you shall be ordained to assist my servant Oliver Cowdery, who I might add is a school teacher. So has some experience in this to do the work of printing and of selecting and writing books for schools in this church. That little children also may receive instruction before me, as is pleasing unto thee. So I love that in Zion, education is paramount. We have to learn and the younger you can start, the more Zion you’re going to be. That’s why education matters.

John Bytheway: 01:01:07 I’ve heard it said that the father of adult education was Joseph Smith because of the School of the Prophets and things like that. The idea of continuing education, I love that ’cause that’s where I used to work at BYU was to continue to educate, and this is the beginning of that. You know what it reminded me of Hank? It reminded me of our friend Brad Wilcox, who’s on the faculty in religious education at BYU. But he started as a professor in education specializing in children’s books.

Hank Smith: 01:01:40 Yeah, literacy.

John Bytheway: 01:01:41 I bet Brad knows that verse really well.

Hank Smith: 01:01:44 Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:01:44 It reminds me, the first Book of Mormon I read was the Illustrated Book of Mormon as a little kid. That was my entrance to the word of God, and it was a children’s version that got me familiar enough with the story so that when I became an adult or could actually read, I could actually read the Book of Mormon. But it started with the most basic introduction to the word of God, or I think about those times I’ve taught nursery. Your lesson is basically Jesus made fish. So Jesus loves fish and that’s your lesson. That’s it.

John Bytheway: 01:02:16 And then you pass out the fishy crackers. Yeah.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:02:18 Yeah. And then you color and you play games and it’s great. You start very young to learn at the age of two that God made fish. By extension you learn so much else as you go, but it starts with those very basic foundations. Just like you teach faith, repentance, you start at a young age to learn it.

Hank Smith: 01:02:40 Now look at the education program of the church today. We could go through this for an hour. Seminaries, institutes, three quarters of a million students. I think BYU pathway. If our listeners out there going, I’ve heard of that. You need to go look that up. This last year, BYU pathway served 74,839 students, 27,583 of them in Africa.

John Bytheway: 01:03:13 What was the picture in general conference that we saw of? Was it Elder Rasband with some adults who are enrolled in BYU Pathways in Africa. That was really cool.

Hank Smith: 01:03:23 What starts here, Emily, you’re right, is the Lord saying we need to be educating and instructing and we have kept that going.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:03:31 Yeah, education is part of Zion. Then in section 57, verse eight, he commands Sidney Gilbert to establish a store. Sidney Gilbert had been business partners with Newell K. Whitney in Kirtland. Sidney is commanded to gather to go to Missouri and in verse eight, it says, again, verily, I say unto you, let my servant Sidney Gilbert plant himself in this place and establish a store that he may sell goods without fraud. That he may obtain money to buy lands for the good of the saints, and that he may obtain whatsoever things the disciples may need to plant them in their inheritance. What I love about this, it’s not just go build a store, it’s Sidney, build a store because.

  01:04:16 Build a store, have a successful business for the good of the saints, that they can plant themselves in their inheritance so that when these saints arrive in this town, they have a way to take care of those temporal things so they can focus on the things that matter more. It’s hard to feel the Spirit and connect to God when you are hungry or you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, or you’re cold at night. It’s hard to become a better person to grow if you don’t have enough to eat or you don’t have a place to sleep. So I think about we build a store, we build a business because it takes care of those basic things.

John Bytheway: 01:05:01 If anybody goes on a church history tour and you go to Independence Square, look to the West and you’ll see a Gilbert and Whitney store. I don’t think it’s the same one that survived, but it’s right there. Down the street from there is the area where the WW Phelps printing press was. It was funny to get there and to look over. You’re at this place where, what does it say? There’s a marker that says this is where the Oregon Trail starts and everything else. There’s a Gilbert and Whitney store right there, and it just always reminds me of this verse right here when you see that.

Hank Smith: 01:05:39 Yeah, you’ve mentioned these names, Sidney Gilbert, you’ve mentioned Oliver Cowdery, WW Phelps, John, you just brought him up. There’s this portion of the manual, and Emily, I’d love for you to comment on this, and this is a portion that helps you teach your children. It says, you may want to explain that WW Phelps, William W. Phelps was a newspaper publisher who had learned about the gospel and joined the church. Read with your children Doctrine & Covenants 55:1 through four, which we looked at verse four, and help them discover what God wanted William to do. How did he plan to use William’s talents? I like this discussion because you said Oliver Cowdery. Oh, he’s got some experience there. Oh, Sidney Gilbert. He’s got some experience being a storekeeper. So it seems that part of Zion is the Lord has given you gifts and those gifts then you can use to build Zion.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:06:31 And the idea that God will take whoever you are and have a use for you, every job is needed. In Zion for WW Phelps, he had learned, he had worked hard and he was a publisher. That’s a tough business. He had learned a lot about that business. So when he joins the church, God says, good, I can use that.

Hank Smith: 01:06:55 Yeah, I can put together a team.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:06:58 As he is commanding people to go to Missouri, he’s not just saying whoever wants to go go. He’s saying, I want Zion to be this. In 150 years, I’m going to send very specific people that will get me where I want us to be. The same pattern holds true. You don’t want everybody in your ward to have the exact same skillset. You know, if everyone is a ward organist, your meetings are gonna be beautiful, but who’s gonna teach Sunday School? You will have natural teachers that will be elevated and you have natural musicians, they’ll be elevated. Some people are great at teaching children, and some people are great at teaching adults. It’s finding that mix and that same thing held true even as they’re coming to Utah as Brigham Young is calling people out in settlements. He’s not just calling 300 farmers, he’s calling farmers, blacksmiths, musicians, gardeners, printers, and all of the people because Zion should be functional, but Zion should also be beautiful and Zion should have good music, good food, be literate, be hardworking, all of those things together. So it’s the idea that God needs all of us. You may not know why you got the degree you did or the job path you did, but if you’re willing to let God lead you, he will turn you into something far more powerful than you ever planned.

Hank Smith: 01:08:31 Coming up in part two of this episode.

Sister Emily Utt: 01:08:34 One of the things I’m excited about as we’re restoring the Lion House is that we get to tell the story of those amazing women that lived there. You have Eliza Snow, who’s General Relief Society President and Zina Diantha Huntington Young, who’s one of the most well-known early suffragists in the church. They love to be out in public. They are going to go out and they are going to change the world through speaking. And there’s other women in that household who are, don’t ever make me talk in public, but I will support you when you come home.