Amelia Eliza Slade Bennion: 'You Shall Have Bread for Your Little Ones' (Wyoming Trail, 1864)

Amelia Eliza Slade Bennion (1854-1936) was a ten-year-old English immigrant traveling with the 1864 pioneer company. Sometime before reaching the Green River in Wyoming, her little family huddled, hungry, in their wagon on a cold, wet day. The next morning, through the rainy mist, Amelia's mother saw an old shack with smoke rising from its chimney. She approached and knocked; the door opened to the smell of cooking meat. The woman who opened the door invited her in to eat, but the mother said, 'I cannot eat, my children are hungry.' The kind woman answered, 'You shall eat, and you shall have bread for your little ones even if we have to go without.' So the starving family was fed by a stranger's charity in the wilderness. Amelia later became the wife of Alfred Bennion and carried the story down to her descendants. This providential feeding is a faith-promoting witness that the Lord, in the hour of hunger on the trail, touches the hearts of strangers to feed His Saints, and that the promise of bread for the little ones is kept by His unseen hand.