Lorenzo Hatch Finds God's Preservation Through 15 Months of Missionary Hardship — Turned Out of Doors Multiple Times

From April 1844 to July 1845, Lorenzo Hill Hatch served a mission that took him on foot across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Vermont — a journey of many hundreds of miles with virtually no money, in poor health, and in the face of open hostility.

He recorded the hardships plainly:

- Turned away from two consecutive houses in cold April weather and forced to sleep in hazel brush with only a valise under his head

- Sick for nine days in Milford, Illinois from the exposure

- 'Treated worse than dogs' on a steamboat to Buffalo

- Denied lodging multiple times in Illinois and New York because he was a Mormon

- Ill throughout much of the journey

Yet at the end, he recorded simply: 'The Lord did preserve me all the time I was gone. At home I found brothers and sisters all well; my grandfather and grandmother were well. I was happy to get home and found Nauvoo flourishing; such crops, I never saw growing out of the earth before.'

Divine preservation through fifteen months of poverty, illness, and persecution.