Description
Bear Witness of Joseph Smith
Matthew Cowley was born August 2, 1897 in Preston, Idaho, the sixth of eight children of Matthias F. Cowley and Abbie Hyde. When Matthew was just two months old, his father was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and in time the family moved to West Temple Street in Salt Lake City. Matthew, a lovable but mischievous child, grew up nurtured by his family as well as senior Church leaders who lived nearby.
On one occasion, Matthew and the neighborhood boys set a barn on fire trying to learn how to smoke during a meeting in the tabernacle. The meeting was dismissed to save the barn.
In 1913, he received a mission call to Hawaii. His neighbor, President Anthon H. Lund of the First Presidency learned of the call and said, “It’s about time. You know you have caused a lot of trouble in the neighborhood. You’ve broken my fence, my hedge, ruined our flowers, and caused all kinds of trouble. Hawaii is not far enough away for you.” Then more seriously President Lund said, “I don’t think you’ve been called to the right place. Would you care if I took this mission call back to the President of the Church and discussed it with him? I’m dead serious when I say that I think you should go to the uttermost bounds of the earth to preach the gospel.”
When the call came back, Elder Cowley was indeed called to the uttermost bounds of the earth—New Zealand. As Elder Cowley and his father waited in the railroad station for the train that would carry the young missionary toward far off New Zealand, Matthias Cowley gave his son some advice.
“My boy,” he said, “You will go out on that mission; you will study; you will try to prepare your sermons; and sometimes when you are called upon, you will think you are wonderfully prepared, but when you stand up, your mind will go completely blank.”
“What do you do when your mind goes blank?” Elder Cowley asked.
Father Cowley replied, “You stand up there and with all the fervor of your soul, you bear witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the living God, and thoughts will flood into your mind and words to your mouth.”
Matthew Cowley arrived in the New Zealand Mission on November 23, 1914, just three months after his 17th birthday. Early in his mission, he became ill. Unable to work, he would spend from dawn to dusk, fasting, praying, and laboring to learn the Maori language. He relates, “Finally, within eleven or twelve weeks . . . I had the audacity to stand up before a group of natives and preach the gospel in their own tongue. I was using words I had never read or heard, and there was a burning in my bosom the like of which I have never felt before nor since in my life. . . . The power of God was speaking through me as a youngster, seventeen years of age.”
Eventually, Elder Cowley mastered the language and “became one of the greatest Maori speakers of all time. He was a magnificent orator. His vocabulary was absolutely beautiful and seemed to be limitless. He received the gift of languages, which continued throughout his life.
As anyone knows who has heard Elder Cowley talk of his mission, he came to love the people of the Islands. He wrote the following in a letter to his father.
“I look forward with dread to the day when I will be released from this work among the Maoris,” he wrote. “My love for these people has reached such a degree. . . . If it was not for the tie which binds me to my father, mother, brothers, and sisters, I would like to devote my whole life to the interest of the Pacific Islanders, not only the Maoris, but the Hawaiians, Tahitians, Samoans, etc.”
Elder Glen L. Rudd, a close friend and associate, wrote this of Elder Cowley. “On one occasion near the beginning of his mission, he was returning to Judea on horseback and dozed off and had a dream. He saw himself as a little boy, sitting on his father’s lap. He was scared, but his father put his arms around him and held him. A man with a long beard came over and put his hands on his head. Then he woke up, still on the horse, and the thought came to him, “I wonder if I have ever had a patriarchal blessing?”
So when he got back to Judea, he wrote his mother a letter asking if he had ever had a patriarchal blessing. Two months later (it took a month for the mail to go one way), he received a letter from his mother. She said that when he was five years old, he went with his father down to Mancos, Colorado, and stayed in the home of an old patriarch named Luther Burnham. While visiting, Matthew’s father asked the patriarch to give his little boy a patriarchal blessing. Just as in the dream, his mother reported that her husband said Matthew was shivering and scared, so he put his arms around him. The patriarch, who did indeed have a long beard, put his hands on Matthew’s head and bestowed upon him his patriarchal blessing. Matthew’s mother enclosed the patriarchal blessing with her letter. For the first time in his life, this wonderful young man read his magnificent patriarchal blessing:
My beloved son Matthew, I place my hands upon your head and confer upon you a patriarchal blessing. Thou shalt live to be a mighty man in Israel, for thou art a royal seed, the seed of Jacob, through Joseph. Thou shalt become a great and mighty man in the eyes of the Lord, and become an ambassador of Christ to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Your understanding shall become great, and your wisdom reach to Heaven. . . . The Lord will give you mighty faith as the brother of Jared, for thou shalt know that he lives and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, even in your youth.”
Sources:
Memories of Matthew Cowley: Man of Faith, Apostle to the Pacific, Elder Glen L. Rudd.
Copyright Glenn Rawson 2021
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