Elder Ballard
Recorded Remarks from the August 2011 Family Reunion
I am sorry that I am not there in Kirtland with all of you Smith cousins, but we have the quarterly meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve on the same time that you are meeting there in Kirtland.
I did want to express my deep love for each of you and thank all of you for what you are doing and [for] honoring the name of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith.
This Foundation has done some wonderful work when we consider how it came about. When we wanted to beautify the cemetery in Nauvoo it just kind of came together with the wonderful support of Wallace Smith and now the Community of Church of Christ along with the family members to organize the Joseph Smith Sr. / Lucy Mack Smith Foundation. We have done a wonderful work over the years. The cemetery, I think, is a credit to all of the family members that have participated in helping to beautify it.
I recall the day that I was informed that a letter had been found in the history—Historical Department– actually, of the Community of Christ Church where Emma had written in her own hand a letter, I think it was to Joseph Smith the III, and in it, it said, “Here is $20.00. It is all mine. Please use it to beautify the cemetery where Father and Mother Smith lie.†That one letter that surfaced bound the whole family together and for all of these years we have worked together and we’ve tried to accomplish many, many good things. We have done, in my judgment, a great work in getting each of the family members, the Hyrum Smith, the Joseph Smith Jr., all of the other children, Samuel Smith, and so forth– all of you now have got your own family organizations and you are getting acquainted with each other and you are learning to know who your cousins are and I think all of this effort of trying to keep the family together and to reach out to family members, wherever they may be– all over the world now—has to be a great sense of pleasure and joy on the part of Father and Mother Smith.
I want you to do all you can to continue to encourage the youth of the family. I have great concern about the children today not only in our family but in the Church. If we are not careful we could lose the sense of what our roots are, who our forefathers are, what marvelous price, what a tremendous price they were willing to pay in order to bring about the fulness of the gospel on the earth again and a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith.
We work hard out here in the West now, we’ve got some work going on at the Heritage Park — This is the Place Heritage Park, up in Salt Lake City–with the same effort to try to have everybody remember how the valley was, here in the Salt Lake, was settled. It was settled because our forefathers, and particularly the Prophet Joseph Smith, had the remarkable experience, which is true, of kneeling in the presence of the Father and the Son, and the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth through him, and those forefathers of ours who were the pioneers of yesterday who made the effort to build the Church from New York to the Salt Lake Valley, going through challenges and difficulties that are hard to express–we must never ever lose the sense of appreciation and gratitude for those who have laid this great work and have given us so much. Therefore, I am so anxious to see that the young children in the Smith family participate in the individual family organizations and ultimately in the Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Foundation so that they will be taught by parents and grand parents what it means to be a member of the Smith family and what it means to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
So my charge to you and encouragement to you this morning is carry on the great work that you are doing, the wonderful work you are doing in family history, the great work that you are doing in the temples taking care of those family members who have not yet had the opportunity to hear the gospel and yet you are doing the proxy work for them in the temples. That’s a wonderful thing and I encourage you for it and thank you for it. It’s a wonderful thing that you are writing your histories and you are seeking the personal histories of your own family members. The more we can know about those wonderful forefathers of ours the more we can reverence and appreciate who they are and what they have given to us the stronger we are going to be as a family.
One of the things that I think is so very important is that we realize that in order for this organization to prosper and to continue to be able to reach out we ought to all not hesitate to participate in paying the dues. They’re very modest and all of us should find it an honor to be able to help to support the work of the Foundation. So I encourage you all to think about that and to be generous as we possibly can so the work can go on year after year touching the lives more and more of our family members.
I suppose many of you are also already members of the John Lathrop Family Foundation. I find it a great pleasure to receive the letters, the quarterly letter from the Lathrop Family Foundation and learn more and more about our heritage clear back to John Lathrop, and that’s the thing that we want to see that gets– continues to go forward in the Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Foundation.
So I hope that you have a wonderful experience together. I hope that you find great joy in being involved and volunteering to participate on the various committees. You will be talking about those during your seminar back there or your family reunion back there. Find things that you can do to participate in to help to strengthen and make the foundation ever stronger, and all of that makes the family ever stronger.
I suppose that there will not be anything that will be more thrilling for anyone of us when that day comes when we pass from this world into the next to be able to hopefully be embraced by Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack and to our forefathers, our grandfathers, in my case, Hyrum and Mary Fielding, and have them say to us, “Thank you, thank you, for keeping the cemetery beautiful, thank you for seeking out the family members and building unity and love and strength within our family,†because when all is said and done families can be together forever in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that’s one of the great quests that all of us have is to build this family unity so that we will stand together in that day when we will all be together in the presence of our wonderful great, great grandparents, and others of our family members that we love.
I have asked our Heavenly Father to bless each and every one of you. Through the holy apostleship vested in me, I ask Heavenly Father to watch over and bless each of you, dear cousins, and your families [that] you may be protected, [that] you may have a wonderful time together and that the gospel of Jesus Christ will continue to be a most precious and important part of your lives.
I, of course, will leave you my testimony that Jesus is the Christ, he is the Son of God, this is his Church. We are all on his errand. There is a great work that we must accomplish in his holy name and may we be blessed to so do is my humble prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.