September 24, 2018

Hi Jon -

I hope you're doing well. Last week was pretty boring - I worked on getting my program working on a MacOS virtual machine. I'm trying to get a meeting set up with Adobe but the guy I want to meet with is in Asia so that's on hold for another week. Mom is working hard trying to become a seminary/institute teacher which involves her taking a college course with a lot of homework. She was really nervous this week to teach a lesson in front of all the students in her class. Next week she is going to teach a lesson in front of real teenage students and she's really stressed about it.

This week was homecoming and Chance went to the dance. I never saw his date or any pictures so far and he didn't say much about it. He doesn't say much about anything these days. I went to the Timpview football game with Aimar because nobody else wanted to go and that was fun. We got beat really bad - like 52 to 14 or something like that. 

Aimar had a soccer game on Saturday morning so I had to wake up earlier than usual and take him. His team won so I decided to buy us tickets to the BYU football game that afternoon. It was really fun and was Aimar's first time in Cougar Stadium and his first time at an American football game. He was pretty amazed by all the sights and sounds, especially the cougar tails! We ate cupbop and it burned his mouth but he liked it. 

I want to share a part of church history that you might know about. When Joseph Smith was suffering in Liberty Jail he came up with an idea to go to Washington D.C. and complain to the President of the United States about persecution and lack of religious freedom the saints faced in Missouri despite the promised in our national Constitution. In D&C 101:85-89 the Lord said He will not "come forth from his hiding place" until after the saints had complained to the judge, the governor, and the president.

Back in those days the President didn't do a "State of the Union" speech every January like they do now. Instead the President wrote a letter to Congress that they read out loud at the beginning of every new session of Congress. What Joseph was trying to do is get to Washington D.C. before the President wrote his letter and ask him to insert a few lines about the saints troubles in the letter so that Congress might do something about it.

Sidney Rigdon went with Joseph to Washington but got really sick along the way so they had to split up and Joseph almost missed his window. However, he arrived in Washington on November 29 (1839) and knocked on the door of the White House on November 30. During those days, anyone could knock on the door of the White House and get in but it was virtually impossible to schedule an appointment with the President. Instead, the President had a reception with food almost every afternoon and you would have to figure out how to talk with the President about your issue with 100 other people in the room also trying to talk about their issues. Not easy.

The president was Martin Van Buren and prior to becoming President, Van Buren had been a lawyer and politician who had advocated on behalf of religious minorities like the Catholics and Shakers. The Shakers, for example, were being fined for not participating in the military even though their religious beliefs strictly forbade it. Joseph thought that if Van Buren had supported religious minorities in the past then perhaps he would help the Mormons now. The problem was that Van Buren barely held 50% of the vote and Missouri was a strong supporter, so if he criticized Missouri and lost their vote then he'd probably lose the presidency. He never did tell Congress about the Mormon persecutions and Joseph Smith never forgave him for it. In fact, Joseph openly supported Van Buren's opponent in future elections and even ran for president himself.

Joseph had to leave Washington D.C. but left someone there who was finally able to speak before a senate sub-committee. The senators from Missouri asked that the issue be tabled before the Mormons even got to speak but they were overruled. The committee chairman said that a vote to table the issue could be done but not until AFTER the Mormons had spoken their complaints. In the end though, the Senate did nothing because even though we had a Bill of Rights, there wasn't a clear way to enforce it in each of the states. In fact the Bill of Rights didn't get enforced at all until after the civil war, and then not entirely until the 1920's.

This experience explains in part why Joseph Smith tried to include so much in the city charter of Nauvoo. First he tried to get Nauvoo to become a city outside of any state (as Washington D.C. is) but that failed. Then he tried to get the city mayor approved to be a general in the US Army. Each item Joseph Smith asked for in the Nauvoo city charter had been approved for other cities in the past, but no one city had ever asked for all of those things at once. It also explains why the saints started making plans to go west and try to leave the boundaries of the United States.

Love,

Dad