If you’re looking for an example in journal writing–someone to model your record-keeping life after–then this podcast on Wilford Woodruff is right up your alley.
If it weren’t for this fourth president of the Church, much of the 19th-century history of the Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be missing. As he confesses in his journal, he was not only compelled, but inspired to write down all of the pertinent information of his life from the day he joined the Church in 1833 until his death as its president in San Francisco in 1898. He stated that every time he heard the Prophet Joseph Smith speak, he would be able to write down nearly a perfect facsimile of his message, even days afterwards. But, once he had put pen to paper, it would be gone from his mind. After he died, his family discovered boxes of journals in his attic, totaling more than1,900 pages worth. And when they were typeset and printed, the totaled more than 5,400 pages!
In this podcast, Martin Tanner and GM Jarrard covered the highlights of his life using a condensed version of his many volumes published as “Waiting for World’s End: The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff.” The author is no apologist for the Church, and likes to portray Pres. Woodruff as a man of odd contradictions, “…The same man who consulted scientific texts for the cultivation of fruit trees for his personal garden was equally known for his apocalyptic vision on a Navajo mesa in Arizona in 1880. The man who balanced his ledger with penny-accuracy modeled buckskin temple robes to friends on his birthday and accepted from Brigham Young, as a birthday gift, one of Young’s daughters as a wife.”
Nevertheless, those with eyes to see and with a testimony to put what he said and did into a spiritual context, it is easy to see why President Woodruff, like all the early Saints who went through so much trials, hardship and persecution would want the Lord to come sooner, rather than later. Members today remember him as the great missionary to the British Isles and the man who had to seek the Lord’s will regarding plural marriage and the survival of the Church and then released the Manifesto. He had 34 children with several wives, some of whom died or left him; 21 of his children–more than half–died before he did.
He was hiding from federal authorities at the time of the dedication of the St. George Temple; his vision of the signers of the Constitution who visited him and asked for their work to be done is well known throughout the Church.
These are just facts. To really appreciate his trials, failures and successes, you have to read his own words–maybe not all 5,400 pages–and feel his pain, like when he recorded the entry of the death of his three-year-old daughter that he learned about in a letter while serving a mission in England.
That’s just an example. To get to know Wilford better, listening to this Latter Day Radio podcast is a good start to appreciate the life and times of this rugged pioneer.
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