Mary Rollins Receives the Gift of Interpretation of Tongues Through Prayer

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner recorded in her autobiography a remarkable spiritual gift she received while living among the Saints in Independence, Missouri, in the early 1830s:

"Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer and Thomas B. Marsh often spoke in tongues in addressing the people on the Sabbath day, and I wanted to understand what they said; so I made it a subject of prayer, that the Lord would give me to understand what was the meaning of their words; for they seemed to speak with great power."

The gift came unexpectedly in a private setting: "One evening the brethren came to Uncle's house to converse upon the revelations that had not been printed as yet, but few had looked upon them, for they were in large sheets, not folded. They spoke of them with such reverence, as coming from the Lord; they felt to rejoice that they were counted worthy to be the means of publishing them for the benefit of the whole world. While talking they were filled with the spirit and spoke in tongues. I was called upon to interpret it. I felt the spirit of it in a moment."

Lightner's account is notable both for the immediacy of the gift — she felt it "in a moment" — and for the context: it came in the presence of the unpublished revelations later compiled as the Doctrine and Covenants.