Carl Christian Amussen: The Danish Pioneer Jeweler Who Appeared to His Wife to Tell Her the Day of Her Death

Carl Christian Amussen was born May 20, 1825, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of a sea captain. He became a convert to the restored gospel and emigrated to Utah, where he was the territory's first pioneer jeweler and watchmaker. He married three times; his third wife was Barbara McIsaac Smith Amussen, and their daughter Flora would later marry a future President of the Church, Ezra Taft Benson. Carl Christian Amussen died on October 29, 1902.

Decades later, his widow Barbara—an officiator in the Logan Temple for twenty years and 'a woman without guile'—received a remarkable visitation. As President Ezra Taft Benson recorded in his book 'Come unto Christ,' Carl Christian Amussen appeared to her in a dream or a vision so real 'it seemed that he was right in the room.' He said he had come to tell her that her time in mortal life was ending, and that on the following Thursday (it was then Friday) she would be expected to leave mortal life.

Barbara received the word with peace. She told her daughter, 'Everything's fine. I feel wonderful. There's nothing to worry about. I just know I'll be leaving next Thursday.' In the days that followed she attended fast meeting in her ward, stood, and—as her bishop said—'bade us all goodbye, expressing her love for us and the joy that had been hers working in the temple.' She bore a fervent testimony. Then she went to the bank, drew out her savings, paid all her bills, picked out her own casket, had the water and power turned off in her home, and went to her daughter Mabel's. The day before she passed, she visited with her son; on the appointed day she told Mabel, 'I feel I will go to sleep. Do not disturb me if I sleep until the eventide'—and peacefully passed away.

President Benson used the story to teach that 'Spirituality—being in tune with the Spirit of the Lord—is the greatest need of Latter-day Saints.' The visitation of the departed husband, and the peaceful, foreknown passing of a faithful Saint, is a witness that life continues beyond the veil and that the Lord remembers His faithful ones.