A collection of personal testimonies and witnesses from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A testimony may include a miracle experience, or it may simply be a witness of Jesus Christ and the blessings of the gospel.
Ezra Taft Benson
Salt Lake City, Utah President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (thirteenth); Apostle President of the Church; former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
I Testify
President Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994), thirteenth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered this solemn, apostolic witness in the Sunday afternoon session of General Conference, October 1988. As a special witness of Jesus Christ, he bore testimony point by point of the great truths of the Restoration.
As a special witness of Jesus Christ, and as His humble servant, it is now my obligation and privilege, as the Spirit dictates, to bear pure testimony and witness to that which I know to be true.
I testify that we are the spirit offspring of a loving God, our Heavenly Father.
I testify that in our premortal state our Elder Brother in the spirit, even Jesus Christ, became our foreordained Savior in the Father's plan of salvation. He is the captain of our salvation and the only means through whom we can return to our Father in Heaven to gain that fulness of joy.
I testify that Lucifer was also in the council of heaven. There was a war in heaven, and a third of the hosts were cast to the earth and denied a body. Lucifer is the enemy of all righteousness and seeks the misery of all mankind.
I testify that all those who come into mortality accepted our Father's plan.
I testify that God reveals His will to all men through the Light of Christ.
I testify that throughout the ages God has spoken to His children through His prophets.
I testify that Christ was born into mortality with Mary as His mother and our Heavenly Father as His father. He worked out the great Atonement, which, through His grace, provides for every soul a resurrection and, for the faithful, the means to become exalted in the celestial kingdom.
I testify that during His mortal ministry Christ established His church on the earth. He called and ordained men to be Apostles and prophets with authority so that what they bound on earth would be bound in heaven.
I testify that a world so wicked that it killed the Son of God soon began killing the Apostles and prophets and so plunged itself into a spiritual dark age. Scripture ended, apostasy spread, and the church that Christ established during His earthly ministry ceased to exist.
I testify that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph Smith in the spring of 1820, thus bringing to an end the long night of apostasy. To Joseph Smith appeared other beings, including John the Baptist and Peter, James, and John, who ordained him with authority to act in the name of God. The church and kingdom of God was restored in these latter days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with all the gifts, rights, powers, doctrines, officers, and blessings of the former-day Church.
I testify that through the Book of Mormon God has provided for our day tangible evidence that Jesus is the Christ and that Joseph Smith is His prophet. It was translated by Joseph Smith through the gift and power of God. Those who will read and ponder the Book of Mormon and ask our Eternal Father in the name of Christ if it is true may know for themselves of its truthfulness through the power of the Holy Ghost, provided they will ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ.
I testify that America is a choice land.
I testify that there has been, and there is now, and there will be legal successors to the Prophet Joseph Smith who hold the keys of the kingdom of God on earth, even the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Associated with him are others who are prophets, seers, and revelators, even those who make up the presiding quorums of the Church, namely the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
I testify that wickedness is rapidly expanding in every segment of our society.
I testify that the church and kingdom of God is increasing in strength.
I testify that as the forces of evil increase under Lucifer's leadership and as the forces of good increase under the leadership of Jesus Christ, there will be growing battles between the two until the final confrontation. But God will provide strength for the righteous and the means of escape; and eventually and finally truth will triumph.
I testify that it is time for every man to set in order his own house both temporally and spiritually. It is time for the unbeliever to learn for himself that this work is true, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom which Daniel prophesied God would set up in the latter days, never to be destroyed, a stone that would eventually fill the whole earth and stand forever. It is time for us, as members of the Church, to walk in all the ways of the Lord, to use our influence to make popular that which is sound and to make unpopular that which is unsound. Now we need eyes that will see, ears that will hear, and hearts that will hearken to God's direction.
I testify that not many years hence the earth will be cleansed. Jesus the Christ will come again, this time in power and great glory to vanquish His foes and to rule and reign on the earth.
I testify to you that a fulness of joy can only come through the atonement of Jesus Christ and by obedience to all of the laws and ordinances of the gospel, which are found only in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
To all these things I humbly testify and bear my solemn witness that they are true, and I do so in the name of Him who is the head of this church, even Jesus Christ, amen.
[Source: Ezra Taft Benson, 'I Testify,' General Conference, Sunday Afternoon Session, October 1988, churchofjesuschrist.org.]
Alma Sonne
Salt Lake City, Utah / London, England (European Mission) Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; President, European Mission General Authority; businessman
My Testimony — Joseph Smith Was a Prophet
Elder Alma Sonne (1884–1977) served as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1941 until his death, and as president of the European Mission. Across more than thirty general conference addresses — including one simply titled 'My Testimony' — he bore witness of the Restoration.
His recurring themes were faith, Christ, and the living prophets: 'Faith, the Bedrock of Life' (October 1956), 'Christ Is the Cornerstone' (October 1963), 'The Gospel Restored' (April 1968), 'Joseph Smith, the Prophet' (October 1969). All of them gathered into his closing testimony at the April 1960 general conference:
'I leave you my testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet,' and that the President of the Church then stood in that same prophetic line.
His life was one of bearing that witness. As president of the European Mission he strengthened the Saints through the hardships of postwar Europe, and as a setter-apart of missionaries he spoke inspired, comforting words that proved prophetic in the lives of those he commissioned. He carried a missionary's conviction that service in the Lord's work is the path of greatest blessing, and he spent a long life persuading others to take it.
In the end his testimony was the simple, repeated witness of an Apostle's assistant: that the heavens that opened upon the boy Joseph still speak through living prophets today, and that Jesus is the Christ at the center of it all.
'I leave you my testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet.'
[Sources: Alma Sonne, 'My Testimony,' General Conference, April 1960; 'Faith, the Bedrock of Life,' October 1956; 'Joseph Smith, the Prophet,' October 1969; Conference Reports of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.]
Elijah Abel
Frederick, Maryland / Cincinnati, Ohio / Kirtland, Ohio / Salt Lake City, Utah Elder; Seventy (Third Quorum); missionary Carpenter; missionary
Ordained by Joseph the Martyr — A Faithful Witness
Elijah Abel (1808–1884) was one of the earliest African-American members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its first African-American elder and Seventy, and its first Black missionary — ordained to the priesthood by the Prophet Joseph Smith, who declared in 1836 that Abel was 'entitled to the Priesthood and all the blessings.'
Baptized in Cincinnati in September 1832, Abel came to Kirtland and helped build the Kirtland Temple. He was ordained an elder on January 25, 1836, received the initiatory in the newly dedicated temple, and that December was ordained a Seventy and inducted into the Third Quorum. As a skilled carpenter he gave his craft to the building of temples and chapels all his life.
His ministry was his testimony. Laboring as a missionary in New York and Upper Canada, he preached among African-American congregations and baptized many. He taught those he converted that 'the time was drawing near for Christ's coming,' but that He would not come 'till God had a people prepared to receive Him, with all the gifts and blessings that adorned His church anciently.' In the face of the persecutions and dangers of his ministry — at one point falsely accused of murder and pursued by a mob bearing hot tar and feathers — he steadied the Saints by quoting the Apostle Peter: 'Think it not strange, brethren, concerning the fiery trials which are to try you...'
Eunice Ross Kinney, whom he baptized in St. Lawrence County, New York, in 1838, remembered him in old age as a 'powerful' minister and one who had been 'ordained by Joseph the martyr.' Abel served three missions in all; the last, to Cincinnati, was the mission from which he did not return — he died in 1884, faithful to the end to the Prophet who had ordained him and to the restored gospel he had carried for over fifty years.
His life is itself a testimony: that the restored priesthood and the gifts of the ancient Church are real, that Christ is gathering a prepared people, and that the fiery trial of a faithful disciple is no strange thing.
[Sources: W. Kesler Jackson, The Witness: Early Black Latter-day Saints; Russell W. Stevenson, Black Mormon Pioneer History, 1830–1869; W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness; Latter-day Saint biographical sources.]
F. Enzio Busche
Germany / Salt Lake City, Utah Emeritus General Authority (Quorum of the Seventy) Business executive; General Authority
Unleashing the Dormant Spirit
Friedrich Enzio Busche (1930–2020) was a German convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who became a General Authority. As a young man in the ruins of postwar Germany he found the restored gospel, and the transformation he experienced became the substance of his life's witness. In his widely beloved BYU devotional, 'Unleashing the Dormant Spirit,' he distilled that witness into spiritual counsel born of decades of discipleship:
'You are a spirit child of God. If you neglect to feed your spirit, you will reap unhappiness. Don't permit anything to detract you from this awareness.'
'You cannot communicate with God unless you have first sacrificed your self-oriented natural man and have brought yourself into the lower levels of meekness, to become acceptable for the Light of Christ.'
'Pause to ponder the suffering Christ felt in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the awareness of the depth of gratitude for him, you appreciate every opportunity to show your love for him by diligently serving in his Church.'
'When you cannot love someone, look into that person's eyes long enough to find the hidden rudiments of the child of God in him.'
'On the road toward salvation, let questions arise but never doubts. If something is wrong, God will give you clarity but never doubts.'
'The greatest achievement that can be reached in our lives is to be under the complete influence of the Holy Ghost. Then he will teach us what is really good and necessary to do.'
'And finally, when you are compelled to give up something or when things that are dear to you are withdrawn from you, know that this is your lesson to be learned right now. But know also that, as you are learning this lesson, God wants to give you something better.'
His testimony, in a sentence, was this: that a man or woman who will subordinate the natural self and yield to the Light of Christ is gradually, really, changed — and that this is the whole purpose of mortal life.
[Sources: F. Enzio Busche, 'Unleashing the Dormant Spirit,' BYU devotional, 1996; Yearning for the Living God (Deseret Book).]
Harrison Burgess
Putnam, New York / Kirtland, Ohio / Pine Valley, Utah Member of the Seventy; Bishop; missionary Pioneer, millwright, and settler
A Glorious Personage Clothed in White
Harrison Burgess (1814–1883) was an early Latter-day Saint convert, a member of the Seventy, a Zion's Camp volunteer, and a lifelong witness of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Baptized in October 1832 at age eighteen, he was soon invited to speak in a Church meeting and 'firmly declared the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.' The next day, however, 'something seemed to whisper to me, "Do you really know the Book of Mormon is true?"' So distraught was he that he retired to the woods to seek divine confirmation. He wrote of what followed:
'The misery and distress that I there experienced cannot be described. The tempter all the while seemed to say, "Do you really know the Book of Mormon is true?" I remained in this situation about two hours. Finally I resolved to know, by exercising faith, whether I had proclaimed the truth or not, and commenced praying to the God of heaven for a testimony of these things. Suddenly a glorious personage, clothed in white, stood before me, and exhibited to my view the plates from which the Book of Mormon were taken.'
He met the Prophet Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1834, worked on the Kirtland Temple, and attended its dedication in March 1836. There he witnessed that 'the house of the Lord was so filled with the spirit of the Lord' that 'the building appeared to have no roof and a light shone far brighter than the noon day sun.'
He stood as a guard at the burial of the martyred Prophet in 1844, served a mission to England, and spent the rest of his life settling and building up the Saints — in Salt Lake, Parley's Park, and the Dixie settlements of St. George and Pine Valley, where he sawed lumber to build up the southern Utah towns. Through the loss of a little son to measles, the accidental shooting death of a fifteen-year-old boy, and the deaths of his wife and daughter within a year, 'Harrison remained faithful to the gospel all of his life.' His testimony was sealed by a heavenly vision and kept through every grief.
[Sources: Harrison Burgess, 'Sketch of a Well Spent Life'; Susan Easton Black, ed., Stories from the Early Saints, Converted by The Book of Mormon, pp. 27, 65–66.]
Henry Burkhardt
Freiberg, German Democratic Republic (East Germany) President of the East German stakes; Freiberg Temple president Church leader
No Man of Greater Faith — Keeping the Church Alive Behind the Iron Curtain
Henry Burkhardt (1924–2001) was the leader who kept The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alive in Communist East Germany, and whose faith President Thomas S. Monson named in a 1975 dedicatory prayer: 'We know of no man of greater faith in Thy kingdom.'
When the German Democratic Republic barred all foreign missionaries in 1960, Burkhardt, then a young local leader, struggled — and succeeded — in keeping the small branches from unraveling. He quietly arranged for Church literature and materials to reach the Saints, and he held the membership together through decades of surveillance, restriction, and isolation. 'Throughout 1960,' the Church's history records, 'Henry Burkhardt struggled to keep the Church from unraveling in the German Democratic Republic' — and he did not let it fall.
His faith was rewarded beyond hoping. Under prophetic promises made to him by President Monson, the Lord opened the way for a temple to be built behind the Iron Curtain itself. When Burkhardt first saw the drawings of the planned Freiberg Temple, 'he had tears come to his eyes... He felt very' overwhelmed at the thought that the Saints of East Germany, sealed off from the world, would have a house of the Lord of their own. The Freiberg Temple was dedicated in 1985 — one of the most remarkable answers to faith in latter-day history.
When the Berlin Wall fell and the missionaries returned, the East German Saints emerged faithful, whole, and ready to send out missionaries of their own — the harvest of a lifetime of Burkhardt's quiet, unyielding trust. His testimony was not a single statement but an entire life: that God keeps his promises to those who will not let go of him, even when the whole world around them is closed.
[Sources: Thomas S. Monson, Faith Rewarded: A Personal Account of Prophetic Promises to the East German Saints; BYU Studies, 'Behind the Iron Curtain: Recollections of Latter-day Saints in East Germany'; Saints, vol. 4, ch. 5; Raymond Kuehne, Henry Burkhardt and LDS Realpolitik in Communist East Germany.]
Ronald A. Rasband
Salt Lake City, Utah Member, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Apostle
Lest Thou Forget
Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles bore his witness in the October 2016 general conference address 'Lest Thou Forget,' born of a friend's 'crisis of faith' and of his own ancestry and experience.
He is the great-great-grandson of Jens and Ane Cathrine Anderson of Denmark. In 1861 two Mormon missionaries were led to the Anderson home and introduced them and their sixteen-year-old son, Andrew, to the restored gospel; the family read the Book of Mormon and was baptized. The next year they crossed the Atlantic to join the Saints. Jens died on the ocean voyage, but his wife and son pressed on to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving September 3, 1862. 'Despite their hardships and their heartaches, their faith never wavered, and neither has the faith of many of their descendants.' Elder Rasband carries the middle initial 'A' to honor that Danish Anderson line, 'a legacy of faith of which my family and I are the beneficiaries.'
He shared a personal prompting received 'in answer to mighty prayer. The answer was clear and powerful. However, I failed to act immediately... and after a period of time I began to wonder if what I had felt had been real.' Days later he awoke with the Lord's words to Oliver Cowdery pressing on his mind: 'Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?' — 'as if the Lord was saying, "Now, Ronald, I already told you what you needed to do. Now do it!"'
His counsel to the struggling is the heart of his testimony: 'Recall, especially in times of crisis, when you felt the Spirit and your testimony was strong; remember the spiritual foundations you have built... those precious times when your testimony prospered will return again to your memory through humble prayer and fasting.'
His closing witness: 'I bear my solemn witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He lives; I know He lives.'
[Sources: Ronald A. Rasband, 'Lest Thou Forget,' Ensign, November 2016 (186th Semiannual General Conference).]
Neil L. Andersen
Salt Lake City, Utah Member, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Apostle
Witness — By the Power of the Holy Ghost
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles bore witness of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon at a Cache Valley young adult devotional at Utah State University on February 23, 2025. 'The word of the evening,' the Church News reported, 'was "witness."'
'Witnesses establish the truth,' he taught, 'helping others to strengthen their belief.' He spoke of the Book of Mormon as 'one of the strongest, most convincing physical witnesses of Joseph Smith's divine calling,' and invited the congregation to recite Nephi's promise with him — 'I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded' (1 Nephi 3:7) — saying, 'These words and a thousand others have gone into my heart like fire. I know they are true.'
He held up the copy of the Book of Mormon from which Joseph and Hyrum Smith read on the morning of their martyrdom at Carthage Jail, bearing witness that the brothers 'died proclaiming the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon,' and then bore his own witness of it:
'I witness to you by the power of the Holy Ghost that I do know the Book of Mormon is God's word to us today, another testament of Jesus Christ, whose truth stands next to the truth of the Bible, in assuring us that Jesus is the Christ.'
Of Joseph Smith he testified: 'Through the power of the Holy Ghost, the truthfulness of the voice of the Spirit, I do know that God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith... I know he was called to restore the gospel and prepare a people for the return of our Savior Jesus Christ. He is who we claim him to be.'
And he closed with his ultimate witness: 'I witness, as did the Prophet Joseph Smith, that Jesus is the Christ.'
[Sources: Neil L. Andersen, Cache Valley young adult devotional, Utah State University, February 23, 2025; 'Elder Andersen Testifies, Shares Witnesses of the Prophet Joseph Smith,' Church News / Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, February 26, 2025.]
Margaret McIntire Burgess
Nauvoo, Illinois Latter-day Saint; recorder of childhood memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith
Memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith
Margaret McIntire Burgess (1837–1919) preserved some of the tenderest childhood memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Her recollections were published as 'Memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith' in the Juvenile Instructor (January 15, 1892) and reprinted in the Relief Society Magazine 5, no. 1 (January 1918), p. 14, and are gathered among the personal witnesses in 'Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of Those Who Knew the Prophet Joseph Smith.'
As a child in Nauvoo she knew the Prophet personally. Her testimony is not a sermon but a child's-eye witness of what Joseph Smith was really like among the Saints — approachable, kind, and mindful of the little ones. She recalled ordinary, intimate encounters, such as the morning she and her brother 'were on our way to school' and 'were forced to walk in some very muddy places as it had rained the previous night,' and the Prophet's dealings with the two mud-covered children on that wet Nauvoo day. Such small moments, carried in memory for more than half a century and put in print in her later years, were her quiet testimony that the man she had known as a girl was a true prophet of God.
Her witness is of a piece with the Saints who knew Joseph in Nauvoo and spent the rest of their lives affirming, from firsthand memory, that he was what he claimed to be.
[Sources: Margaret McIntire Burgess, 'Memories of the Prophet Joseph Smith,' Juvenile Instructor, January 15, 1892; Relief Society Magazine 5, no. 1 (January 1918): 14; as cited in Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of Those Who Knew the Prophet Joseph Smith (ed. Richard Lloyd Anderson).]
John Lowe Butler
Simpson County, Kentucky / Missouri / Spanish Fork, Utah Bodyguard to the Prophet Joseph Smith; Bishop of Spanish Fork Mormon frontiersman
I Know for a Surety He Was a Servant of the Most High God
John Lowe Butler (1808–c. 1858) was a Kentucky-born Mormon frontiersman who served as a bodyguard to the Prophet Joseph Smith and later as bishop of Spanish Fork, Utah. His autobiography is a sustained testimony of divine mercy and of the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith.
'From my first remembrance I had serious reflections on futurity,' he wrote. As a child he was grievously afflicted — inflammatory rheumatics that passed 'from my feet to my finger ends in every joint,' an impostume on his leg, and dropsy in his left eye until it was swollen shut for thirteen days and the doctor 'said it would be difficult to save' him. He was reduced so low that 'my mother could carry me from one room to another with ease, in her arms, but through the means used, the Lord began to restore my limbs again so that when I was twenty-two years of age I was getting better than ever I expected to be.' He grew to stand six feet tall.
His spiritual awakening came at a Methodist camp meeting. While others rejoiced, he felt miserable and alone; then, crossing a room, 'there was a power came on me that threw me to the ground and every nerve in me seemed to be numb... and the first thing I knew I cried for the Lord to have mercy upon me.' Afterward, in class meeting, he felt 'as though my seat was sinking from under me,' pled 'Lord God to forgive me, a sinner,' and the burden left him. 'There was a voice which whispered to me and said, "You have yet to preach the gospel to the world."' Troubled by the contention of the sects, he covenanted in his heart that 'when I could come to know the true order I would stand up for it, and even lay down my life if necessary for the truth as it existed in heaven.'
He found that true order in the restored gospel and became one of Joseph Smith's bodyguards. Of the Prophet he bore witness: 'I know for a surety that he was a servant of the Most High God.' His life — surviving the Missouri persecutions and the 1838 Election Day fight at Gallatin, crossing the plains, and shepherding the Saints in Spanish Fork — was the living out of that youthful covenant.
[Sources: Autobiography of John Lowe Butler (c. 1808–1858), typescript, HBLL; William G. Hartley, My Best for the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler, a Mormon Frontiersman; as cited in Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of Those Who Knew the Prophet Joseph Smith.]
Richard Lyman Bushman
Salt Lake City, Utah / Portland, Oregon Historian; author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
Why I Believe — A Historian's Testimony
I was born in Salt Lake City to parents who had been married in the temple. I am a fifth-generation Mormon on both my mother's and father's sides; I had ancestors who knew Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. You could say that I was born Mormon and will likely die Mormon. Why then am I always interrogating my own faith? I am always asking why I believe. We live in a wilderness where we cannot see God; we must believe in him in his absence. We listen for the voice of a person we cannot see, coming not by sound waves to our ears but as a spirit voice. If that is our situation, how can we not sympathize with bewildered questioners? Under those circumstances, I too question God.
My answers to my own questions are partially philosophical but mostly practical. When a colleague at Claremont asked me how it is that I believe in Mormonism, I told him I remain a Mormon because when I followed my religion I became the kind of man I want to be. No philosophy, no evidence, nothing elaborate. Simply the personal reality that my religion helps me get better. When I hearken to the spirit, truth seems to abound in me.
That conviction goes back to my mission. As a young man my faith had drained away under the pressures of a skeptical age, and when my mission president asked if I had a testimony I honestly said I did not. He handed me the Book of Mormon and asked me to find a better explanation for it than the book itself gave. For three months I wrestled with the book and prayed, sometimes in agnostic form — 'if you are God...' When it was my turn to speak I said with conviction that I knew the Book of Mormon was right. The reasons I had concocted for believing were not the difference; it was more the simple feeling that the book was right. After I returned from the mission field, I no longer had doubts, but I did have questions.
I have sympathy for questioners because I am a questioner too, and yet I hold to my beliefs not because of evidence or the arguments but because I find our Mormon truth good and yearn to install it at the center of my life. Among the most powerful witnesses that Jesus is alive today and actively attending to our needs — and among the most powerful forces that make me want to cling to the Church — are the Book of Mormon, temples, and priesthood blessings. I see challenges to faith the same way I see flaws in my wife. Ultimately faith is a choice to focus on, to build on, to seek more of the positive feelings we have undeniably felt; a choice to nourish something that is growing; a confession that, alluring as other options may sometimes seem, we really have nowhere else to go.
[Sources: Richard L. Bushman, 'My Belief,' BYU Studies 25:2 (1985); 'Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify,' FairLatterDaySaints.org.]
John Bushman
Joseph City, Arizona / Lehi, Utah Pioneer and Arizona settler Farmer and pioneer diarist
Diary of a Pioneer's Faith
John Bushman (1843–1926) was, in his family's words, 'truly a pioneer's pioneer' — born in Nauvoo, a settler of Joseph City, Arizona, and a lifelong diarist whose journals record a quiet, steady faith through decades of pioneering.
His diaries again and again turn ordinary labor into testimony. On December 31, 1892, after a modest harvest, he wrote: 'Our circumstances are some better than last year having raised a moderate crop. We have donated some for the completion of the S. L. temple. We are thankful for a name and standing in the Church of Christ.' On September 22, 1896, in the midst of the fall molasses work, he recorded a tender spiritual experience: 'Very early in the morning the angel of peace visited me and administered peace to my soul.'
He cherished the temple above all earthly things. When, on April 6, 1893, he was among the 2,200 leading priesthood admitted to the newly completed Salt Lake Temple, he wrote that they were 'conducted through all the principal rooms and explained the uses of the different departments... all very grand and magnificent.' In his final years he spent his time 'doing temple work, recording his genealogy, and writing in his diaries,' and in 1922, past seventy, he traveled to Canada to be with his daughter and 'went through the Cardston temple.'
His faith was the simple, rooted faith of a man who had known the Church from Nauvoo to the Arizona desert. 'We've been called upon to repent and be baptized,' he recorded of the early Arizona settlement. 'We have received instruction' and he tried all his life to live it. His closing testimony is the testimony of a life: thankful for 'a name and standing in the Church of Christ,' visited by 'the angel of peace,' and devoted to the house of the Lord.
[Sources: Diaries of John Bushman, 1871–1923 (Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah); Derryfield N. Smith, ed., John Bushman: Utah-Arizona Pioneer, 1843–1926 (John Bushman Family Association, 1975).]
