Author Archives: Rebekah Richards

About Rebekah Richards

Born before the internet age, I recall reading my way through the set of encyclopedias in my parents home. In addition to non fiction, I also enjoy a good novel and love the written word. Music was a staple in my childhood home, I love to sing and often sing too loud. When I was 11 years old I went with my grandma and dad to visit Grandma's family in West Virginia where they had lived for generations. I fell in love with "my" people and have spent a lifetime learning their stories. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in History and am passionate about people and their stories, those who have paved the way for the life we live, those who impact our lives daily and those whose lives our decisions will affect. I am the sister to six wonderful siblings, the wife of my best friend and the mother to four very above average children. Most of all I find deep hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to follow Him.

I know thy heart

I listened to a friend share an experience of a simple, quiet answered prayer and was again reminded that the Lord wants to hear and wants to help His family.  I have spent many years serving in Primary at church and I smile at the memory of a prayer given one Sunday in nursery.  Each week before the lesson one of the children offers a prayer.  Not all of the words of the prayers spoken are recognizable to my ears but I am sure the Lord hears and understands.  One week a little boy was very distinct in his desires as he asked for assistance, “Please help us to not wet our pants.”  This prayer was especially important for us that day as we had three children coming to nursery for the first time after they had been potty training.  The faith of a child was gratefully answered in the affirmative and there were no accidents in nursery that day.  

 “Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers.  I know thy heart, and have heard thy prayers…” (D&C 112:10-11).  Our Father hears the prayers we speak and the prayers of our hearts we do not have the words to express.  We are His little ones. Nothing is too small or trivial, too big or too overwhelming for the Lord.   If it is important to us, it is important to Him. “Love of God is the first great commandment of the universe. But the first great truth in the universe is that God loves us exactly that way -wholeheartedly, without reservation or compromise, with all of His heart, might, mind and strength.” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, October 2021) As we come in humble prayer to Him, He will hear and He will help.

Spot of Ground

My brother and his wife had the opportunity to travel to Switzerland last month and soon after their return, they attended their son’s mountain bike race in Manti, Utah.  As my brother searched for our Swiss ancestors graves in the Manti cemetery he sent me these photos:

From this...
To this...
As I looked at the pictures and thought of my ancestors, I could hear the question of the servant in the vineyard, “How comest thou hither to plant this tree…? For behold, it was the poorest spot in all the land of thy vineyard.  And the Lord said…Counsel me not…” (Jacob 5:21-22)
 
While the green villages of Switzerland were prosperous for some of my ancestors, for the Frischknecht family, it was a place of poverty.  My great great grandfather, Conrad Frischknecht, was born in the town of Herisau, Switzerland where as a young child he began working in a lace or cloth factory running errands, threading needles and picking up broken threads.  His family did not own property and at one time were housed in a home shared with three other families where illnesses spread quickly.  Hunger was a frequent companion which was sometimes alleviated by begging for a portion of the ample rations provided the Swiss soldiers stationed in their area.
 
When Conrad was six years old, his parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which brought additional persecution to his young life.  His parents were able to send his older brother, John, with a group of Saints who were emigrating to the United States and three years later, Conrad and his parents followed, settling in Manti, Utah.  It was a far cry from the features of their Swiss homeland but it was their land of opportunity.  
 
Prosperity was a slow process.  Jobs and income were hard to come by but land was plentiful.  They obtained two and a half acres and built the home where he and his wife would raise their family.  Conrad did primarily physical labor until an accident at the mill where he worked significantly reduced his capacity.  Still, the land planted with fruit trees and a large garden allowed them to feed their family, sell the excess and by small jobs he and his children obtained, they were sheltered, fed and had opportunities for education and spiritual growth.  His three sons graduated from college, his two daughters obtained teaching certificates and each of his children made covenants with God in the Manti temple, a temple he had helped to build.  These gifts of temporal and spiritual opportunity have been passed down through the generations that have followed.
 
“Counsel me not; for I knew that it was a poor spot of ground; wherefore I said unto thee, I have nourished it this long time, and thou beholdest that it hath brought forth much fruit.” (Jacob 5:22). Conrad and his family followed the Lord to this “spot of ground” and it bore “much fruit.”  As we serve with the Lord of the vineyard and heed His counsel, we will witness “fruit” greater than we could envision in all the types of ground in which our lives grow.

Rescuer and Rescued

On Sunday, October 5, 1856, President Brigham Young stood in Sunday services and issued a plea, “…many of our brethren and sisters are on the plains with handcarts, and probably many are now seven hundred miles from this place, and they must be brought here, we must send assistance to them. The text will be, ‘to get them here.’ …That is my religion; that is the dictation of the Holy Ghost that I possess. It is to save the people.” (As quoted by President Gordon B. Hinckley, October 1991)

We are all familiar with the story of the tragic loss and the rescue of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, but this summer I learned that one of the men in that rescue party was my third great grandfather, Samuel Bennion, and my perspective shifted because I know Samuel’s story.

He and his family had travelled the very route he retraced that October and had experienced their own trials on it. In their effort to follow the Lord, Jesus Christ, each of the rescuers had travelled that path. Through their own experiences, they had been prepared to respond to the call of the Savior, through His prophet, “to save the people.” Still, when they met those stranded on the trail, they had never seen the depth of suffering that met their eyes.

There was only one who could understand the measure of the stranded pioneers’ pain. The Savior, Jesus Christ, had “take[n] upon Him their infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that He may know how to succor His people according to their infirmities.” (Alma 7:12) He has traversed the path of our pains, our sorrows, our weakness to be prepared and ready to rescue us in our deepest distress. As we walk with Him, He allows us to go to the rescue with Him and to be rescued ourselves.

“I testify that God sees us as we truly are—and He sees us worthy of rescue….just as the Good Shepherd finds His lost sheep, if you will only lift up your heart to the Savior of the world, He will find you. He will rescue you. He will lift you up and place you on His shoulders. He will carry you home.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, April 2016)

Receiving Revelation

Receive Revelation at General Conference Saturday September 30 and Sunday October 1 https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/event/october-2023-general-conference

My son’s mission president referred to General Conference as “free revelation” where prophets and apostles authorized to speak for the Lord, Jesus Christ, teach His doctrine and we invite the Holy Spirit to inspire our minds to help us apply that doctrine in our own lives.  As I have prepared to hear the voice of the Lord this weekend, I was reminded of an experience I had during the October 2009 General Conference.  I did not have high hopes for getting much out of the meetings.  

Our four children at the time ranged in age from 4 to 10 and I found I was happier during conference if I focused more on them and read the talks for myself later.  After the opening welcome, the first talk was by Elder Richard G. Scott, who shared his experience of receiving impressions from the Lord, writing them down, pondering them, and praying to know if he was understanding correctly or if there was more.  He encouraged us to ”respond to, record, and apply the first promptings that come to you.”  I listened and my first reaction was to laugh at the thought of a mother of young children being able to immediately record any impressions or promptings.  Surely, it wouldn’t work for me.  

Quickly, I had a second thought reprimanding me for my response.  I was listening to an Apostle of Jesus Christ give counsel on how to “Hear Him” better and I disregarded and discounted it because it didn’t fit my current experience.  I repented and began to try and follow the guidance I’d received.  

One morning shortly after, I was in the kitchen when I had a thought, a prompting, about a matter I was pondering.  I stopped to write it down.  As I wrote, my children were trying to get my attention and without thinking I said, “Just a second, I’m having revelation and I need to write this down.”  When I finished, the kitchen was quiet.  My children’s eyes were on me and for thirty seconds I got to explain what the Holy Ghost feels like to me.  It was an unexpected outcome, an unanticipated blessing to share with my children.  It was a blessing I would have missed following my own experience and wisdom.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9). I am not sure why I am so often surprised at the way our Creator blesses my efforts.  In my weakness, I only catch a glimpse of the dreams He has for us as He entreats us to follow Him and know Him a little better.  Step by step, line by line, grace by grace, He blesses our every effort in ways we had not imagined.

Never Seen Green

Born and raised in the hills of West Virginia, my grandma moved to Richmond, Virginia to pursue her dream of being a nurse at the Medical College of Virginia. After graduation she continued to live and work in Richmond through the beginning of WWII when she met a soldier from Utah at a dance. At the end of his training, he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, she followed and they were married in St. Louis December 5, 1942.

Two and a half years later, with the end of the war in sight and expecting their second child, Grandma traveled by train with their toddler to Salt Lake City, Utah to live with Grandpa’s family until his release from the army.  Travel weary she stepped off the train to “the most God-forsaken place” she had ever seen.  As a child, I argued with her that our mountains were green and beautiful to which she replied, “Honey you haven’t ever seen green.”

Those words brought a smile to my face this week as I flew into Richmond and drove through the lush green of Virginia. All those years ago when I disagreed with my grandma, I really never had seen the kind of green her eyes had grown accustomed to seeing. More than two and a half centuries ago, when survival depended on what could be grown, my ancestors pushed their way through that green terrain and in a never ending effort, cleared the land to create a place for their families to grow and thrive. In their struggle they turned to God, gained strength and passed that strength to my grandma. That strength allowed her to live cheerfully in the difficulties of her own personal rugged landscapes and bless her posterity.

In the same way, others of my ancestors, in faith, traversed the rugged mountains of Wyoming and Utah and planted and nurtured crops and trees where nothing had ever grown before. When I drive through the canopy of sycamores that line the main street of my town, I see the love and care of generations who planted and nurtured every tree that now grows in the valley. They testified that in so doing they had strength beyond their own and their faith and persistence continue to bless the generations who follow.

“I believe the Savior Jesus Christ would want you to see, feel, and know that He is your strength. That with His help, there are no limits to what you can accomplish. That your potential is limitless. He would want you to see yourself the way He sees you…. You are a daughter or son of the Almighty God. Your Heavenly Father is the most glorious being in the universe, full of love, joy, purity, holiness, light, grace and truth….He gives power to the weary; and to those who feel powerless, He increases strength. They who wait upon the Lord will be renewed by His strength.” (Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, October 2022)

Whether the landscape we find ourselves facing is green and lush or barren and forsaken, we can be “renewed by His strength” to endure, cultivate, enjoy and pass to generations to come a legacy of faith and strength.

Imprinted on our hearts

Last week, I attended the wedding reception of my cousin’s daughter.  As we chatted with the bride and groom, the groom asked if we were close as cousins.

Memories tumbled through my mind.  I could see us all lined up on the couch with stoic faces while my cousin played the stand up comic and even a twitch of the lips tossed you out of the game.  We spent days at the golf course for tournaments, practicing, putting for money to buy lunch in the cafe, looking for golf balls to sell to the pro shop for the same purpose and lining up in rows with “pickers” to pick up the balls on the range and dump them back into the bin near the clubhouse. 

We sold lemonade and then rode our bikes to the Sprouse-Ritz to buy candy bars with the money.  We gathered for holidays, Sunday dinners and at Thanksgiving, after the traditional “Turkey Bowl” football game and eating delicious food, we expressed gratitude for hours.  I recalled waking up with my cousin’s feet in my face while we all slept in the same hotel room one Christmas Eve.  There were hours in the car together, singing, playing the alphabet game, looking for Kawasaki motorcycles and slugbugs and finding ways to best endure the 4-60 air conditioning (four windows down at 60 mph).  As adults, we do not see each other as much as we once did but the memories of love and laughter are imprinted on my heart. Yes, we are close.

The Lord knows us as well, “Before I formed thee…I knew thee; and before thou camest forth….I sanctified thee.” (Jeremiah 1:5). Someday, we will all be “taken home to that God who gave [us] life.” (Alma 40:11) and we will understand more clearly how well we know Him and He knows us.  For now we don’t see Him as much as we used to but the memory of His love and the joy we experienced with Him is imprinted on our hearts.  He is close to us.   

Promises Afar Off

As my son unpacked his mission suitcases, he handed me a booklet.  “Do you remember this?”  It was a letter from me written while he was in the temple receiving his own endowments and I was at home with a runny nose during a pandemic. Reading the letter and seeing the stories I had gathered brought back the sweet feelings I had on that day.
 
My parents served as mission presidents in the Florida Tallahassee Mission.  While they were there, they were given a book on the history of the Southern States Mission detailing the stories of the faithful pioneer saints of the south.  The Florida Conference of the Southern States Mission was organized in 1895 and my great grandpa, William Henry Summerhays, arrived as a nineteen year old missionary in 1896.  There was one branch in all of Florida and the organizations formed were Sunday Schools of that branch.  William kept a journal recording their daily activities as well as those who were baptized, their birthdates and parents names.  Wanting to be close to my son’s experience in the temple, while he and my husband were gone, I scanned the pages of William’s journal and gathered stories from the history of the Southern States Mission and attached the relevant pages to the people they detailed in Familysearch.org.
 
As I did so, I noticed something.  As I looked at the ordinances, I did not see one who received an ordinance beyond baptism and confirmation during their lifetimes though they were faithful their entire lives.  With travel difficult, a trip to the temple in Utah must have been an impossibility for so many of them who sometimes barely had the resources to feed and shelter their families.  As I sat at my computer that day feeling sad that I couldn’t be with my son in the temple, my heart connected with those early saints who because of distance and expense were not in the temple as they desired.
 
Elder Renlund shared the story of his own grandparents who were baptized in Sweden and for similar reasons to the early saints of Florida did not receive the covenants they hoped for in their lifetime.  Like others, his grandmother, Lena, “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, … [was] persuaded of them, and embraced them.”…Lena lived as though she had already made these covenants in her life. She knew that her baptismal and sacramental covenants connected her to the Savior. She “let the sweet longing for [the Redeemer’s] holy place bring hope to [her] desolate heart.” ….Through covenant, she received the power of God to endure and rise above the depressive pull of her challenges and hardships.” (Elder Dale G. Renlund, April 2023)
 
There are so many blessings we desire in this life, so many opportunities we wish to participate in and see the fruition of, yet like those early saints, some things are outside of our power and choice.  And so we bring our offering, our faith, and our hope to the Lord.  We connect ourselves to Jesus Christ by covenant and allow Him to transform us and make our lives, our offerings, our faith and our hope perfect in Him and through Him we become capable of receiving all that He has. He knows every longing of our heart, every tear we have shed and knows how to fill every empty place.  We can have faith in Him. He is a God of miracles and keeps His promises. 
 

To learn more about your family history, visit Familysearch.org

To learn about more about temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, visit:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/why-latter-day-saints-build-temples?lang=eng

Care for Each Other

In 1896, nineteen year old William Henry Summerhays was called to serve as a missionary in the Southern States Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He was assigned to the Florida conference and served in many areas of the Florida panhandle.

On July 8th, 1896, William and his companion, Elder Fisher, had arranged to speak at a meeting in a home in the “Burnett Settlement” just south of Live Oak, Florida.  As they travelled there, they visited homes along the way.  In this way, they met Mr. Lees, who “was having some very sad sickness in his little home.  He had buried a 14 year old girl yesterday and had two boys now at the point of death…we offered to assist him any way we could…We promised to come back and sit up [tonight] after meeting…One of the little children during the night kept telling us he was going to die in the morning and sure enough when morning came he began to sink and in a short time he was dead.  We tried to console the parents as much as possible.” (Journal of William Henry Summerhays)

It may seem that on this night there was no miracle, no healing. Instead, I find myself pondering a loving Father who sent someone to stay through this most difficult night with this little family. 

Elder William H. Summerhays far right

 And I am grateful for the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ that inspires a nineteen year old boy and his companion to walk into and not away from a situation of deep grief, that inspired them to forsake a good night’s sleep to care for the sick children of a family they had never met and console bereaved parents.  The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us to reach out.  Perhaps their efforts did not change the outcome, but their efforts meant that a husband and wife in a tiny settlement had someone to help them carry their sorrow and two young men grew in love as well.  Their service was changing their hearts to be more like His.

Today we welcome home our third missionary son, who served in the same areas as his great great grandfather, marking six consecutive years that our family has had a missionary serving and I have witnessed the truth that “Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover the He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can.  He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds,…lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace.” (President Ezra Taft Benson as quoted by President Russell M. Nelson, October 2022)

As we give ourselves to Him, He will change us to be more like Him.

Find stories about your ancestors at Familysearch.org.

Learn more about the missionary program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at:

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/topic/missionary-program

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/belong/share-goodness/10-things-to-know-about-missionaries

More Than Me

I am a people watcher and I’m afraid I also eavesdrop on people’s converstaions in public. One afternoon, I was standing in line at a clothing store behind a couple with two young children, a boy whose shoe size was 12 kids and a girl who wears 4 youth.  As they came to the register, the mother and daughter left to look at a different store and the boy and his dad remained to pay.  As the cashier folded and sorted the clothes, the boy stated, “She has more than me.”  As a mother, my first instinct was to reassure the boy that things would even out but the dad didn’t hesitate, “Dude,” he replied in a matter of fact tone, “She is always going to have more stuff than you, you just need to get used to it.”  I almost laughed out loud!  Wisdom passed from father to son.

It is easy to compare, to measure what we have and what we think others have.  “It is not a constructive exercise for us to try and compare our circumstances to another….The Lord tells us that there is going to be adversity along the way and He even suggests to us that our afflictions will be consecrated for our gain….Ultimately we can be reassured that the promise of eternal life is for everyone.  Everyone will be rewarded for their faithfulness equally.  If you endure to the end, you’ll be blessed.  It might be hard today and tomorrow and the next month, but it will not always be hard.  You can do this as you exercise faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement….’Be of good cheer for I will lead you along.’  That’s a promise from the Lord.” (Elder Gary E. Stevenson, No blessings denied the faithful)

There will always be someone who is going to have more stuff than you.  There will always be someone who seems to have endured too much or who seems to sail easily through life.  There is so much we don’t know, so much we don’t see but we do know that our Heavenly Father knows, He loves us, and He has a plan for all of us to have “all that [our] Father hath.” (D&C 84:38)

D&C is an abbreviation for Doctrine and Covenants, Learn more at:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/doctrine-and-covenants?lang=eng

Better Together

I think everyone who can remember September 11, 2001 knows where they were and what they were doing on that day.  I was in my kitchen with my two young sons feeding them breakfast when my husband called to tell me a plane had flown into the Twin Towers.  Not wanting my young sons to absorb too much, I turned on the radio and listened to the unfolding events.  On that tragic day, political affiliations, religious persuasions, education, social classes, and ethnicities were forgotten.  We were all Americans bonded by our common grief and horror.  
 
On Saturday, we, like many of you, gathered to commemorate 9/11 with a “Day of Service”.  Members of our community created “Pantry Packs” to feed the hungry, they gave blood, helped clean up parks and trails and in the morning, more than two hundred and fifty gathered to participate in a 5K with the entrance fees all going to the local children’s justice center. 
 
Volunteers were there before the sun was up and as runners began to assemble, energy built.  Friends greeted each other, strangers introduced themselves.  As people warmed up a few broke out into dancing.  A family gathered in yellow shirts all running with their 85 year old father and grandfather and everyone else cheered for him too.  Veterans and current military service men and women came to help us remember those who put their lives on the line to protect the freedoms we enjoy every day.  The high school drum line played and as the national anthem was sung, we all turned to the flag flown from the ladder of a fire truck with our hands on our hearts.  
 
This time it wasn’t sadness and grief that united us.  Instead we felt what one runner expressed as the “power of gathering.”  Every person brought the strength of their presence and the combined capacity was tangible.  “The children of God have more in common than they have differences. And even the differences can be seen as an opportunity. God will help us see a difference in someone else not as a source of irritation but as a contribution. The Lord can help you see and value what another person brings which you lack. More than once the Lord has helped me see His kindness in giving me association with someone whose difference from me was just the help I needed.” (President Henry B. Eyring, October 2008)
 
We are surrounded by children of God who carry portions of His talents, gifts and capacities.  Together, we are more like Him than we are by ourselves and together we can create and strengthen the community that lifts us all.