Free True Sisters by Sandra Dallas Page A

senses.”
    “A cart, not a wheelbarrow. And we’re as sensible as we’ve always been,” Maud insisted, although she and Robert wondered themselves how they could walk a thousand miles or more. In fact, they had asked the missionary that very question, and he had replied that if their faith was strong, the Lord would give them strength. And their faith was indeed strong.
    The old couple had been good members of the Church of England before they met the missionaries, and at first, they were not inclined to pay attention to the doctrine from America. But they were kind people, and out of courtesy to the nice young men who called on them, they listened to the message about the Mormon Church and agreed to attend a service. The preacher wasn’t as good as Thales Tanner, whom they met later in Iowa City, but nonetheless, they were caught up in his zeal. After the service, Maud told her husband that a heat like a coal fire had gone into her heart when she heard the brother speak, and Robert replied that he’d heard angels singing and a light had seemed to shine on the missionary, although they were crowded into a dark room with others, where only a lamp and the glare of the fire in the grate lighted the room. Could it be that at their age they were being called by the Lord?
    Maud and her husband pondered the message of the Mormons and studied their book. Their pastor, a man almost as old as they were, told them that Satan had taken hold of them and was tempting them, that their souls would be lost if they embraced the Mormon faith. Why, he himself would hold open the door to hell for them if they joined the upstart church, he told Maud. “You would bring disgrace to your family name for joining such a cursed religion. You would be the devil’s odd man.”
    The couple was wounded at that, because the minister had been their friend for many years, and they’d hoped they could trust him to counsel them. The two gave it time, because they did not want to be wrong and because one of them would not join the church without the other. They were always of one heart. But in the end, they would not deny that the Lord had spoken to them, and they were baptized.
    They were faithful converts, donating their time to the church, welcoming elders into their home, tithing, for the church demanded much. It never occurred to them that they would ever be called to Zion, and at first, they demurred. “Our age,” Maud said.
    But the missionary would not be put off and insisted that if they sold their few belongings, they would have enough to pay for passage to America and a cart that they could push to Zion. “Others even older than you are going, and they have put their trust in the Lord. I had thought you firmer in the faith.”
    They talked it over then, for one never made a decision without first hearing from the other. The two were closer than most couples, perhaps because they shared the tragedy of five little children who had not lived to grow up. The couple was poor and hardworking, Robert still laboring in a carpentry shop, and they often worried what would happen to them if he became too infirm to work.
    “We’ve never taken an adventure,” Robert said one evening as they sat in their worn chairs in front of the hearth.
    “What if we fall into sickness?”
    “You heard the missionary. We must have faith.”
    “Faith may give us strength, but it won’t help if you break your leg.”
    “And what if I do?” he asked. “What if I die out there? I won’t be any more dead there than I would be here. Besides, there’s a chance we’ll make it all the way, and wouldn’t that be something?”
    “A fire to go burns inside of me,” Maud said.
    Robert took her worn hand, the skin dry and thin as paper. “Me, too. Old girl, we’ll do it.”
    And so they boarded the ship at Liverpool and made it safely across the ocean. The fresh sea air cleansed the vapors from their systems, and they arrived in Boston feeling younger than their