Description

He Carried Me Home

It was the time of the corn harvest. All the community turned to their fields, and men and boys hired, helped, and shared until the harvest was secured for the winter.

In one field, a man named Palmer sent out his sons to work. Tagging along with them that afternoon was their six year-old sister. While the men worked, the little girl occupied herself by playing among the corn rows until the day’s end.

When evening came and the work day was ended, the boys prepared to leave the field. But by this time, the little one had worn herself out, and was too tired to walk all the way home. She asked her brothers to carry her. And when they refused, she started to cry.

Then, one of her father’s hired hands walked over, picked her up, and placed her on his shoulders. She threw her arm around his neck, and with his arm thrown across her feet to steady her, he carried her all the way home.

That act of gentle kindness stayed with that little girl for the rest of her life. And while so many of that community and country would turn against that young man, including her own family, she carried that simple memory all her life and into her latest years.

Who was the young kind-hearted farm hand? – Joseph Smith Jr.

In her very advanced age she was asked to share her recollections of Joseph Smith. She told that story and added this: “There never was a truer, purer, nobler boy than Joseph Smith.”

Who could have imagined on that long ago day in a cornfield that one act of simple compassion would live forever, and memorialize the character of that man?

My friends, is any act of righteous kindness ever wasted or truly forgotten? – I don’t think so.

Source: They Knew the Prophet by Hyrum and Helen Mae Andrus, p. 1-2