On Being COLD

No matter what we tried to do, we couldn't warm up.

More clothing, walking briskly; nothing seemed to help as the air conditioned airport closed in around us.  It was cold on this winter night.

As I was shivering, I thought of the PIONEERS.

It didn't seem like a very likely comparison.

 I was inside a building....they didn't have any buildings when they were coming across the plains.  I would be able to get some heat at some point.  But, for them, there was no relief; no warm building, no additional clothing to pile on, no hope of finding a warm room in a warm building.

And, as I was shivering, thinking of them, I realized that, once again, I owe them so much.  They did what I do not think I could have done.  They suffered so tremendously; they endured.  I felt like such a wimp that cold afternoon when I contemplated what they had gone through.

While I was exercising this morning, I listened to a talk by our new Prophet in which he shared this experience from Eliza R Snow:

Eliza R. Snow, second General President of the Relief Society, offered a riveting answer. Because of Missouri’s infamous extermination order, issued at the onset of the grueling winter of 1838,7 she and other Saints were forced to flee the state that very winter. One evening, Eliza’s family spent the night in a small log cabin used by refugee Saints. Much of the chinking between the logs had been extracted and burned for firewood by those who preceded them, so there were holes between the logs large enough for a cat to crawl through. It was bitter cold, and their food was frozen solid.

That night some 80 people huddled inside that small cabin, only 20 feet square (6.1 meters square). Most sat or stood all night trying to keep warm. Outside, a group of men spent the night gathered around a roaring fire, with some singing hymns and others roasting frozen potatoes. Eliza recorded: “Not a complaint was heard—all were cheerful, and judging from appearances, strangers would have taken us to be pleasure excursionists rather than a band of gubernatorial exiles.”

Eliza’s report of that exhausting, bone-chilling evening was strikingly optimistic. She declared: “That was a very merry night. None but saints can be happy under every circumstance.”8

What a remarkable attitude those Saints had.  

And, what a complaining nature I seem to have.

I have a long way to go to unfreeze my cold heart to become a true SAINT!