Mary Parks's dream and its fulfillment

“I dreamed that I was the only one left on earth. I was very desirous of going to heaven. Suddenly I found myself being lifted from earth and carried upwards. I felt as though I were passing through the clouds. A man came to me, gave me his right hand and helped me to a place where I sat down. I looked again at the man, when I saw another tall, dark man on his right a little behind him. I looked at the place where I was sitting and saw a large gallery of people, and on the right of the man who helped me there was a vacant chair. I wondered who it was for. I then awoke. I will now tell my brethren and sisters of the fulfillment of my dream thirty years afterwards. On January 16th last a gentleman called at my home. I thought I had seen his face before. He told me he was a missionary, that he had left his home and loved ones and had come seven thousand miles to preach the gospel and bear testimony to its restoration in these latter days. He told me about the Latter-day Saints. I told him that some of my friends had joined them many years ago, but that I understood that 'Mormonism' had long since died out. I asked him his name. He told me it was Enoch Russon, that his home was in Lehi, Utah, but that he was laboring at that time in Blackheath. On his third visit I recognized him as the man I had seen in my dream thirty years before. When we reached Snow Hill Station, Birmingham, we were met by the tall, dark man I had also seen in my dream—President Corbridge of the Birmingham conference. When we reached the room where we were to prepare for baptism I saw the vacant chair I had seen in my dream. As I stood on the steps before going down into the water I looked up, and there stood the gallery of people I had seen in heaven. Elder Enoch Russon then gave me his hand and helped me into the water.”

— Mary Parks, as recorded in The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 70, No. 34