By H. G. B.
CHAPTER I.
A BUSY MISSION—A RICH HARVEST OF SOULS—JUDGMENTS UPON OUR OPPONENTS.
I am writing from a place (Mount Airy, Surry County, N. C.) that I visited as a missionary first in 1868. Then I labored in company with Howard K. Coray, in this and Stokes Counties, N. C., and in some three or four Counties of Va., for two years and three months, during which time we baptized nearly three hundred souls, one hundred and sixty of whom accompanied us home to Utah. It is of some of the incidents of this mission that I wish to write.
I remember very well, that after laboring some months in Virginia, and baptizing some thirty persons, we left Burke's Garden, Va., the 20th of January, 1868, reaching this point after three days' travel. We were absent from Burke's Garden just two months to a day, and during that time we held fifty-four public meetings, baptized thirty persons, and organized them into a branch of the Church. In addition to our public meetings, we visited from place to place among the people, constantly teaching, both day and night, often till after midnight.
It was generally understood where we were to visit, each day and night, for a week ahead, and at each of these places, crowds of the neighbors would assemble, coming from their homes, guided through the darkness of the night by their pitch-pine torch-lights.
When, on these occasions, we met with the people, we had to do a vast amount of teaching and singing (Elder Coray being an excellent singer), and answer hundreds of questions. What one could not think of another would. And thus we had to teach and explain and answer the demands made upon us day after day, and night after night, until our instructions in this manner covered hundreds of discourses, and until we were so nearly worn out, that we had sometimes to retire to the woods and hide, to get a little respite from our too-constant labor.
We indeed literally sowed the seed in tears and in peril, in the midst of opposition and bitter persecution. But the Lord fully magnified His name, His cause, and His servants, in all that we had to do and to bear.
The new Methodist church in this place, which was denied us to preach in, was, two days afterwards, struck by lightning, and so nearly demolished that, I am told, it was never repaired. A man, who was a class leader, who abused his sister for going to our meetings, and shamefully lied about Elder Coray and myself, and said all manner of evil, falsely, against the Latter-day Saints and the gospel, was found by his wife, the next morning, dead by her side; and because his body did not get cold like ordinary corpses, he was not buried for nearly a week after his death.