Quote

I finally started reading Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. At the rate I'm going, I might have it finished by the time we start studying church history in 2017. It's a little slow right now. But I did want to share a quote I liked from Asael Smith, Joseph's grandfather. I went ahead and modernized the spelling and punctuation.

Wherefore, my dear children, I pray, beseech, and adjure you by all the relations and dearness that hath ever been betwixt us, and by the heart rending pangs of a dying father, whose soul hath been ever bound in the bundle of life with yours, that you know one another, visit (as you may) each other, comfort, counsel, relieve, succor, help, and admonish one another, and while your mother lives, meet her (if possibly once every year). When she is dead, pitch on some other place; if it may be, your older brother's house; or if you cannot meet, send to and hear from each other yearly, and oftener if   you can, and when you have neither father nor mother left, be so many fathers and mothers to each other. So you shall understand the blessing mentioned in the 133 Psalm. 


I think this was Mom's greatest wish for us. It's hard to do, seeing as the six of us live in six different states, but about whom else can you say that your "soul hath been ever bound in the bundle of life with yours?" Fortunately, we have more technology and easier means of communication and travel than was available in Joseph's day, and I hope we use it as much as is practical for us.

By the way, I don't mean this as a thinly veiled attempt to guilt you all into visiting us here in Boston, although I would be thrilled if you did!