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Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson Kingsford

When Paul and Mormon discussed charity, the first thing both of them said to describe it is charity “suffereth long.” Righteousness is not in how long we suffer or who causes it, but how we endure it. Charity suffereth long and is kind—not bitter. May I illustrate?

Aaron and Elizabeth Jackson and their three children left for Zion in 1856. They soon found themselves on the windswept plains of Wyoming, as part of the Martin Handcart Company. Aaron came down with the mountain fever and each day grew weaker and weaker. On October 19th, at the last crossing of the North Platte, Aaron started across, but the icy water was too much. He sank down on a sandbar exhausted. He was helped to his feet and a man on horseback carried him across. No sooner were they on the bank when a terrible storm of snow, hail, sand, and fierce winds struck. Aaron was loaded into an empty cart and with his feet dangling over the back panel and was carried to camp. Elizabeth tried to feed him, but he had not the strength to swallow. She put him to bed. The night was bitterly cold. Sometime after midnight, Elizabeth awoke and reached out for her husband. “I put my hand upon his body, when to my horror I discovered that my worst fears were confirmed. My husband was dead….The elements had sealed up his mortal frame.”

The next morning, while Elizabeth and her children wept, the men of the camp covered Aaron and 13 others in a grave of snow. “I will not attempt,” Elizabeth wrote, “to describe my feelings at finding myself thus left a widow with three children, under such excruciating circumstances. I cannot do it. But I believe the Recording Angel has inscribed in the archives above, and that my sufferings for the Gospel’s sake will be sanctified unto me for my good.”

A few days later, the men of the camp were so weak that there was not one with strength sufficient to raise the tents. Elizabeth sat down on a rock, and with a child on her lap and one on each side, passed the night with nothing but the vault of heaven for a roof and the stars for companions.

Understandably, Elizabeth became despondent. “I was six or seven thousand miles from my native land, in a wild, rocky, mountain country in a destitute condition…and I, with three fatherless children, and scarcely nothing to protect them from the merciless storms.”

That night, when Elizabeth went to bed, Aaron came to her and said, “Cheer up, Elizabeth, deliverance is at hand.” The rescuers from the Valley had found them and took them to a place out of the worst of the elements called Martin’s Cove. “The sufferings of the people were fearful,” Elizabeth wrote, “and nothing but the power of a merciful God kept them from perishing.”

Elizabeth and all three of her children made it to the Valley. To her posterity, down to the last generation, she wrote this:

“I…desire them to know that it was in obedience to the commandments of the true and living God, and with the assurance of an eternal reward—an exaltation to eternal life in his kingdom, that we suffered these things. I hope, too, that it will inspire my posterity with fortitude to stand firm and faithful to the truth and be willing to suffer, and sacrifice all things they may be required to pass through for the Kingdom of God’s sake.”

For her faith, Elizabeth was given the highest blessings that can be conferred upon any woman in mortality.

Source:

https://www.geni.com/people/Elizabeth-Kingsford/6000000018249545515