History - The Second Rescue

"...the members of the Riverton Stake...completed over 4,000 ordinances for over 1,000 people, 

all [were] members of the Willie and Martin handcart companies." 

History - The Second Rescue

This physical rescue of 1856 was the FIRST RESCUE. In 1992, the Riverton Wyoming Stake completed the SECOND RESCUE, a spiritual rescue. This was when the temple work linking the families together was completed.

For years Robert Scott Lorrimer, President of the Riverton, Wyoming Stake, had been in the thick of pioneer trek youth conferences, an activity designed to give the people of his stake a deeper sense of their heritage. It was a natural activity since the rescue sites of both the Willie and Martin companies were in the stake boundaries. He had helped construct hand carts, eaten the pioneer diet of bread, milk and onions at the activities, and walked to Rock Creek where the Willie Company had faced their deepest ordeal. He did not know that the story would become much more personal to him.

Though he had been involved in pioneer activities for years, there came a time when strong unexpected feelings about the Willie and Martin people began to fill President Lorrimer. Day and night something was urging him, nudging his spirit to think about their sacrifice and loss. He couldn't shake them from his heart as he drove through the Wyoming highlands or went about life's routine duties. He felt he was to do something for these people, but had no specific sense what that something was. Since Rock Creek was about to be sold, he wondered if these feelings had to do with helping the Church obtain that property. Finally, President Lorrimer was so moved that he arose in stake conference and asked the stake to pray for the Willie project. As he sunk back into his seat, he thought, "I don't even know what the Willie project is."

The movement in the Spirit that was prodding President Lorrimer was also affecting his counselor Kim McKinnon, only in a different way. He had learned that the Church was going to start a pilot program in which some stakes would be given a computer and the CD roms that they might open a fully operating genealogy library . In a way he couldn't explain, President McKinnon knew that the Riverton Stake had to be chosen to receive the program and made a trip to Salt Lake to request a computer. In fact, he felt they needed not just one computer, but two. This was an unusual thought since their stake had so few active genealogists. Why was his spirit so certain they needed computers to do genealogy? The Riverton Stake received their two computers and the CD roms from the Church, but when they arrived the presidency members weren't sure how to set them up or even how to look up a name in the genealogy files. Leaving counselor John Kitchen to figure it out, Presidents Lorrimer and McKinnon traveled out to the stake's Lamanite branch.

Looking out upon Wyoming's empty plains, Robert Lorrimer wondered again. Why am I so pushed about the Willie people? Why do they move me night and day? Why am I filled with thoughts about a people I really know nothing about? Then it struck him and he knew. Knew why President McKinnon had his own urgings about getting computers for genealogy. "It came into my mind very clearly, that it was because of the Willie people," said President Lorrimer.

When President Lorrimer shared his impression with his counselors, they too felt he was right. The temple work for the Willie and Martin Handcart companies was incomplete. Somehow, through an unintended oversight, those who had sacrificed everything for the gospel had not yet received their temple blessings. But the stake presidency didn't even know a single name of the people in the companies. They had no way to check on the computer what they felt in their hearts. The stake presidency remembered that for his Eagle project, a boy in their stake had placed a stone at Rock Creek listing the names of the thirteen who had been buried there. They had a little snapshot of the stone and when they found it, they could clearly read the thirteen names.

President McKinnon took down the first name, James Kirkwood, and entered it into the computer. It showed that no temple work had been done for him. "If all this has been for one boy," thought President Lorrimer, "that's good enough." Then they entered the name of Bodil Mortensen. Again the computer reported that no temple work had been done. The Presidency were in tears as they continued down the list of those buried in that forgotten, common grave. Again and again they found that their temple work had not been completed. When they submitted the names to Salt Lake, the fact was verified. The three of them resolved together to find these thirteen people and any others whose work had been overlooked.

"We knew we had been given an assignment," said President Lorrimer, and President Gordon B. Hinckley later asked him, "How does it feel to be the President of two stakes?"
"What do you mean," asked Lorrimer.
"The Riverton stake and the responsibility you bear for the Willie and Martin people."
"The dead ones are harder than the living ones," quipped President Lorrimer. "They talk to you even when you're asleep."

A special stake-wide sacrament meeting was held at which everyone over the age of 12 was given a name of a member of the Willie and Martin handcart companies to research and be responsible for. Suddenly those computers which nobody had known how to set up were whirring all day as the Family History Libraries were open from 6 AM to midnight. It was a flurry of activity as people researched names, submitted them and went to the temple.

The living were as blessed as the dead in this activity. One of the branches leaped from 18 active members to 120. As members of the stake became attached to the people whose lives they came to know, they erected monuments at the rescue sites in memory of the handcart pioneers. Six thousand letters poured in from all over the world from those who cared about or were related to the handcart pioneers. The stake collected mounds of journal entries describing the handcart journey. One member who had never sculpted before, created a life-size sculpture of the pioneers in his basement, a scene with Bodil dying and an angel lifting up her spirit beyond the place of suffering.

At the project's end, the members of the Riverton Stake had completed over 4,000 ordinances for over 1,000 people, all members of the Willie and Martin handcart companies. Those who had died struggling to come to Zion needed 85% of their ordinance work completed. Those who had lived beyond the journey still needed 53% of their ordinance work finished.

It was a second rescue that matched the first in dedication and love. The God who was acquainted with them remembered the desires of their hearts and did not let them down.