Belle Richards and the Angels of the Sink — Two Children Lifted From a Rock Slide (1885)

In the summer of 1885, eight-year-old Belle Richards lived with her family in the Utah mountains. One afternoon was set for a family excursion to collect pine gum — the pioneers' chewing gum — and Belle was excited to go. But her father pulled her aside: her mother had the baby to care for, and little Joe was too small for the trip. Belle was to stay home and tend to him. Devastated at being left behind, Belle made a plan: she would take Joe up to the picnic herself. She knew in her heart it was wrong, and to arrive in time the two children would have to take a shortcut through a place the family had been expressly forbidden to go — a gully high in the mountains they called the Sink, with steep sides and a deep, icy lake at the bottom.

About halfway around the Sink, the children found the path blocked by a huge rock slide. Belle made the wrong decision, and the mountainside began to fall. 'I knew we were about to be killed,' she later wrote. 'I said the quickest and most heartfelt prayer of my life,' telling Heavenly Father she was sorry she had disobeyed her father and would never do it again. The instant she finished the plea, she felt a force lift the two of them out of danger and set them gently back on the path — not the path toward the picnic, but the path leading home. Belle knew it was a miracle, and from that day dedicated her life to the Lord. She kept the experience to herself for years, even through a full-time mission, thankful that Joe was too young to tell anyone.

The miracle's confirmation came after Belle returned from her mission. Her father asked whether she had ever been in trouble at the Sink. During Belle's absence, he explained, little Joe had fallen dangerously ill with a fever — and one night, in his delirium, had told the story perfectly: how the two of them had been crossing the Sink on their way to the family's gum hunt, how the mountain began to slide, and how, as they were sliding down into the Sink about to be killed, angels picked them up in their arms, removed them from the danger, and carried them back to the path. When the fever broke, Joe could not remember anything about it — he had been too young to recall either the miracle or his telling of it.

Belle confessed the truth to her father, who rejoiced that a miracle had been performed to save his children. For a time Belle wondered why Joe, who had seen nothing, would describe angels she herself had not seen. As she thought and prayed about it, she came to understand: she was the one who had disobeyed, and Joe — still innocent and pure — had been shown with his own eyes what hers could not see. Belle later testified that from that day there were many times she felt lifted up by angels, but it was the day at the Sink that a miracle turned her life around and put her back on the path toward her eternal home.

The account was adapted by filmmaker T. C. Christensen as the short film 'A Pioneer Miracle' (2003), produced in both an LDS version and a non-LDS version titled 'In the Arms of Angels' (2004). The films include interviews with people who knew Belle, who grew up to become a Latter-day Saint woman of unwavering faith and a poet.