When the first missionaries stopped at Mentor, Ohio, in October 1830, they found a field “white already to harvest.” Sidney Rigdon was prepared for the gospel and led many of his Campbellite flock into the waters of baptism. And
When the first missionaries stopped at Mentor, Ohio, in October 1830, they found a field “white already to harvest.” Sidney Rigdon was prepared for the gospel and led many of his Campbellite flock into the waters of baptism. And in Kirtland, a few miles away, the Lord had prepared many others for the message of the Restoration. Early missionary work was so successful that Kirtland quickly became a focus for Church activity, a place of testing and refining for the Saints.
The missionaries—Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Ziba Peterson—were headed west to preach the gospel to the Indians, a mission commanded by Doctrine and Covenants 28, given the month before. During their few weeks’ stopover in Ohio, they confirmed and clarified the stories circulating about Joseph Smith and the gold plates. And the powerful testimony they bore led to the baptism of a number of Kirtland residents.
The Rollins children, Mary Elizabeth, 10, and James Henry, 12, had moved to Kirtland with their widowed mother to be near their mother’s sister, the wife of Algernon Sidney Gilbert who owned a mercantile business with Newel K. Whitney. Both Mary Elizabeth and her mother were baptized within a month of the missionaries’ visit, but Henry held back, “as I did not thoroughly understand it.” 1
Some time later, Mary Elizabeth saw her first Book of Mormon, one sent from Joseph Smith to Brother Isaac Morley, presiding elder in Kirtland, who had also been converted by the four missionaries. Before a meeting at Brother Morley’s house that night, Mary Elizabeth asked to see it. As she looked at it, she writes, “I felt such a desire to read it, that I could not refrain from asking him to let me take it home and read it, while he attended meeting.” She begged “so earnestly” that he gave it to her on condition that she have it back before breakfast the next morning. She and her aunt and uncle Gilbert stayed up very late reading it, and she was up again at daybreak.
True to her promise, she returned it before Brother Morley’s breakfast. He commented, “I guess you did not read much in it.” She showed him how far, recited the first verse to him, and gave him an outline of the story of Nephi. Surprised, he capitulated: “Child,