Mormon Artists Group

Hello. After the announcement of our most recent publication, I Visit the Spirit World with My Mother, I’ve been treated to miraculous tales of the other world. Friends and subscribers have been sending me some of their own family stories as well as episodes from church history that I’d never heard before.

When I was a child, amazing stories like this were part of our common conversation. I remember my parents telling me about appearances and interventions of the three Nephites, extraordinary encounters with the spirit world surrounding temple activities, healings, angelic warnings of danger, protection, and many inexplicable occurrences in dreams and visions. We talked about these things at the dinner table and as we worked on our farm. My friends added their stories too, about mysterious things, exciting and wondrous things. All of these were fed into the hopper of my little brain.

Maybe I’m just an old, cynical, New Yorker now, but it seems to me that these stories are fading away from us as a culture. I can’t recall the last time someone at church told a story that involved heavenly intervention. Are we all skeptics now? Is the fantastic the realm of fanatics only?

My father died 18 months ago. He died of cancer, a victim of Downwinder’s, the atomic fallout from Nevada testing decades ago. I have been wondering lately what he is doing these days. It pleased me to hear my mother describe an experience she had recently in which he visited her at Christmas time. I believe that story because I believe her, and I want to believe it.

I like storytelling. Regarding these stories from heaven, I like them too, and I think they are of benefit. When I hear someone else’s stories even if they sound a bit too far out there to be believed, I stop short of denying their possibility.

On our website, www.mormonartistsgroup.com, I’m going to post a few of the stories people have passed on to me recently about the spirit world. I’d love you to add your own stories. [Add to "COMMENTS" below.]

Here’s one involving Lorenzo Snow that was published in the Improvement Era, 1929, the year my father was born.

Ella Jensen died at 10:00 am one Sunday morning. She was twenty years old and had been ill with scarlet fever. She awakened in the middle of the night and requested a hair brush and comb because her uncle and some messengers were coming, she said, at 10 o’clock to take her with them.

That morning, her uncle, Lorenzo Snow, was speaking at the tabernacle in Brigham City. When he was passed a note in the middle of his sermon, he excused himself and traveled to the Jensen home. He and Rudger Clawson administered to the body and said, “Dear Ella, I command you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come back and live; your mission is not ended. You shall yet perform a great mission.” Clawson and Snow left at noon.

For an hour and a half, nothing more happened. Then Ella sat upright and asked, “Where is he, where is he?” When her parents told her that the men had departed, she said, “Why did he call me back. I was so happy and didn’t want to come back.”

She then described her experience in the spirit world. “I could see people from the other world and hear the most delightful music and singing that I ever heard. This singing lasted for six hours, during which time I was preparing to leave this earth, and I could hear it all through the house. At ten o’clock my spirit left my body. It took me some time to make up my mind to go, as I could hear and see the folks crying and mourning over me. It was very hard for me to leave them, but as soon as I had a glimpse of the other world I was anxious to go and all care and worry left me.”

After meeting her grandfather, uncle, and aunt, Ella continued: “Everybody appeared to be perfectly happy. I was having a very pleasant visit with each one that I knew. Finally I reached the end of that long room. I opened a door and went into another room filled with children. They were all arranged in perfect order, the smallest ones first, then larger ones, according to the age and size, and largest ones in the back rows all around the room. They seemed to be convened in a sort of primary or Sunday school presided over by Aunt Eliza R. Snow.” They were singing a hymn, “Gladly Meeting, Kindly Greeting,” a song Ella acknowledged was a favorite in the early church days that was seldom sung anymore.

About her return, Ella noted that she explained to Sister Snow that she had to leave, and she entered the long hall again to bid goodbye to her relatives, “They seemed to want me to stay with them. I obeyed the call, though it was very much against my desire, as such perfect peace and happiness prevailed there; no suffering, no sorrow. I was taken up with all I saw and heard, I did hate to leave that beautiful place.”

Ella thought that she would return to the earth for a short time, but she lived sixty-six more years, until 1957. She married Henry Wight in 1895 and gave birth to eight children. Late in life, when asked about her experience in the spirit world and whether she was glad she returned to earth, she stopped, and answered hesitantly that she supposed she was glad. (See Improvement Era, Sept./Oct. 1929, Leroy C. Snow)

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Reid Nibley

We note the passing of Reid Nibley on February 25, 2008. Anyone who has sung his Primary song, “I Know My Father Lives,” has experienced what Reid was like: kind, gentle, talented, generous, funny, smart, agile. He was one of a new generation of LDS artists who were extremely accomplished in the realm of concert music (his debut as a piano soloist with the LA Philharmonic came at age 17, and he played two dozen different piano concertos with the Utah Symphony of a long period) and who also remained committed to the church and its music throughout his lifetime. A music scholarship in his name was established this fall at Brigham Young University.

Reid worked with Mormon Artists Group on our project Mormoniana. He and his wife Nona were leaving on a mission at the time, and he said that he’d love to contribute a piano work, which became “Hill Cumoroah.” We met on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after his mission was over. Both he and Nona struck me as teenagers in adult bodies. They were excited about experiencing every good thing, and they seemed to find joy in everything.

He told me a story once that made me laugh. As a young boy in Southern California, Reid and a friend decided to go to the opera Carmen, being performed outdoors at the Hollywood Bowl. They jumped the fence and moved closer and closer to the music. Finally, they could see and hear the performers. The boys saw two empty chairs, so they decided to sit in them. Suddenly, they realized that they had wandered onstage and that everyone could see them. So they just sat there and, as Reid noted, made their stage debuts.