Coming to Raymond: a Missionary's Story
One young couple, newly married, arrived as the first Raymond missionaries.
The bride relates:
"As we arrived that first day in Raymond a puff of wind
caught my pretty ‘going away’ bonnet. It flew off my head and rolled over
and over on the frozen ground, never to be seen again. This was to be my first
introduction to Raymond as we sat in our open buggy with hot rocks at our feet
to help keep us warm. What a feeling of loneliness crept over me, a young bride,
as we rode on and on over endless prairies. I had come from a mountainous
country and the large stretches of prairie grass made me feel as if I were in
the middle of the ocean straining my eyes for sight of land.
"We were met in Stirling by a friend with a buggy and fine horses and
the next morning left for Cardston where we reported to President Charles Ora
Card. I was immediately called as a missionary to labour amongst the Y.M.L.I. in
connection with my husband who had been called in 1897 on a previous mission to
Philadelphia for 27 months. When released, the authorities said to him, "go
home a marry a good Mormon girl and we will call you on another mission."
From his journal: "That next year I had a call to Canada as an M.I.A.
missionary. As I was engaged to be married, we decided to go to Canada and were
married in October and, nine days later, left for Canada."
The first thing they did as missionaries was to go to a store and purchase
fur coats to keep the wind out. As they traveled from place to place she caught
cold and got pneumonia. She was nursed back to health by a lady in Mountain
View.
"As missionaries we traveled to all the towns in southern Alberta,
holding cottage meetings, going from door to door, speaking in church and
mingling at socials and dances. Our field of endeavour was from Mountain View on
the west to Stirling on the East, covering all the towns in between."
Excerpt from personal journal courtesy of Evelyn Hendry from the Raymond Museum and Archives.
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