The Gift of Tongues and Healing in the Stirling Settlement

Johann Theodore Brandley (1851–1928) was a Swiss-born Latter-day Saint living in Richfield, Utah, where he served simultaneously as bishop, patriarch, and mayor. In April 1899, President Wilford Woodruff called him to lead a small colony of Saints to establish a settlement in Alberta, Canada, as part of a large-scale irrigation project for the Northwest Territories. Brandley sold his farm, store, and land, and with his wife Eliza Zaugg Brandley and several of their children set out for the bare prairie.

The arrival was sobering. On May 5, 1899, they landed at a siding called Stirling, unloaded their goods onto the open prairie, and took shelter in a railroad section house. "Here we were strangers in a new & strange land," Brandley recorded — a level prairie as far as the eye could reach, the nearest town twenty miles north. Rain began on May 14 and continued nearly all summer. Yet within weeks the Stirling Ward was organized (June 25, 1899) with Brandley as bishop, and a frame meetinghouse 30 x 48 feet was erected before year's end, sheltering fifty-four families.

Despite the hardship, Brandley recorded a distinct outpouring of the Spirit among the settlers: "We had peace & good feelings prevailed – The spirit of God was with us and made itself manifest in our meetings by the gift of tongues & the healing of the sick." Sunday School, Mutuals, and Primaries were organized, and the ward was placed in good order. During the fall the settlement was visited by President Joseph F. Smith and George Q. Cannon. The canal was completed ahead of schedule in November 1899, and Brandley reflected, "All in all we felt gratefull to our Father in Heaven for the many blessings recived at His hands." He would later serve as a counselor in the Alberta Stake presidency and as president of the Taylor Stake.