Happy Birthday, Susie

Happy Birthday, Susanna!!  Love you.

How is the 2015 Gibson Family Reunion going at the Dixon home in St. George, Utah?  Sounds like a fun day at Angels Landing, Cafe Rio and then the talent show. And three birthday cakes to handle the crew.  Thinking of you all but especially remembering our fun Sus.  YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY!!!  Thanks for your love of history and for your thoughtful manner.  Thanks for your beautiful smile and willing heart.  Have an extraordinary year. 

Susie celebrates her birthday at the 2013 Lake Arrowhead Gibson Family Reunion

2008 Gibson Family Reunion at the Bishop Home in Colorado

The Ensign article by Matthew J. Grow in April 2007, “The extraordinary life of Parley P. Pratt” is right:  Parley Parker Pratt was extraordinary.

 “I read all day; eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when the night came, for I preferred reading to sleep.”  Feeling the confirmation of the Holy Ghost, Parley wrote:  “I knew and comprehended that the book was true. … My joy was now full.”

Parley was in the Richmond Jail when  guards in “dreadful blasphemies and filthy language” boasted of their participation in the Saints’ persecution, Joseph rebuked them in the name of Jesus Christ in a “voice of thunder”: “SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit. … Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!” The “quailing guards … begged his pardon.”

Parley wrote, “Dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri.” 

When on mission in England Elder Pratt founder and editor of the newspaper, the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star. 

Author with most notable being:

A Voice of Warning (1837)

Key to the Science of Theology (1855)

Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985

Poet:  50 hymns in first hymnal and 7 in the latest hymnal.   

Most known are:

The Morning Breaks

An Angel from on High

Come, Oh Thou King of Kings

 Jesus Once of Humble Birth

“The Church had only been organized for 21 years when Elder Parley P. Pratt, his wife, Phebe Soper, and Elder Rufus Allen arrived in Valparaíso, Chile, in 1851, as the first missionaries in South America. [Pratt’s biographers said, “Phoebe was more than eight months pregnant at this time and was enduring a sixty-four-day journey on the open sea.”]Their work was especially challenging, since none of the three spoke Spanish, and no Church literature had been translated into Spanish. Adding to these difficulties was the fact that the country was preoccupied with a civil war.  Although no permanent mission was established, it is significant that an apostle labored in this area so early in Church history.  Elder Pratt never lost his concern for the South American people.”                                                                                Feb 1975, Ensign, The South American Mission

Rey L. Pratt, Parley’s grandson, was nine when his family moved to Mexico to help settle Colonia Dublán, a Mormon colony in the northern state of Chihuahua. Rey grew up in Mexico, learning to appreciate its history and people.  He was also responsible for creating a new translation of the Book of Mormon into Spanish; he also translated many of the hymns of the church into Spanish. (The only other person who did a considerable amount of this work was Eduardo Balderas). He was privileged to go as translator in 1925 when the First Presidency sent Elder Melvin J. Ballard, and Rulon S. Wells to Argentina to officially open missionary work there. “From Footholds to Strongholds:  Spreading the Gospel Worldwide”  Ensign, June 1993, by Richard O. Cowen, professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University

And another descendant who grew up in the Southern Arizona Stake:  President Carl Barton Pratt, a Seventy called as the Mexico MTC President when in 2013 the Church-owned Benemerito de las Americas school became the New MTC.  He said of this occasion, “It’s an emotional thing for me to have this happening here, because I was born in Mexico and I’ve always loved it,” he said. “It’s a tremendous privilege and a blessing to be involved in all of this.”

1823
History does not begin with us. To deny our history is to deny ourselves. If we don't know our history, we have no roots and any wind can blow us away. Valparaiso has not been blown away by the wind, nor sunk by the waves, by floods or earthquakes because it has strong roots some of which are honored, remembered or lie here.