I told him I had not accomplished what I was promised. "But," said he, "if you die here you will not accomplish it; and had you not better go than be buried in this land?"
I answered, "I was commanded to come here and perform a certain work by the highest authority in Zion. I will not go home unless you command me."
He saw my faith, blessed and comforted me and I went back to my labors.
When a boy I received, at the Nauvoo Temple, my endowments and the birthright, with promises, under the hands of my father, which I relied upon.
I returned to Salt Lake City September 19th 1853, making three years and five months, to a day, that I was absent.
In going through Salt Lake City I find prominent merchants who were poor lads in my field of labor. I find an owner of real estate on Main Street who used all the means his entire family could gather together to bring himself out here, so that he could raise means to emigrate them afterwards. I pass by costly shops of merchandise and find the owners are people who, in our Norwich Conference, were very poor. I see a cottage and beautiful grounds, and find them owned by one with whom I shared, in that land, the portion given to me by the poor.
I go through the country and find scarcely a family of those who emigrated in 1853 but what is surrounded by all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life. I now realize that whether my first mission, in its ending, was much or little, its results no man can tell.
I am satisfied and paid for the very little and feeble labors that I performed. I returned bright and zealous in the love of the truth. God has never yet forsaken me by His Spirit, and I do not believe that any man will ever be trusted to walk in the footsteps of his Elder Brother, Jesus, as a Savior of a world, or ever be seated with honor on the right hand of His Father, until he has learned to wade through deep and troubled waters, up stream and against the current without earthly props or stays.
I am closing this history near my sixtieth birthday, and have been moved to write it, that my gratitude and acknowledgement of the honor done me by the Lord, that His testimonies given to one of His servants in the latter-day work, might be preserved and live on the earth. I gratefully dedicate it to President Franklin D. Richards, with the hope and prayer that he will use it, at the time and under the circumstances which his wisdom shall dictate, for the strengthening of the faith of the young, and the comforting of the hearts of some old veterans whose touching experiences have, perhaps, never been known away from their own firesides.