1916: Journal of a Missionary This is the Color Version made available for higher quality pictures. For a less expensive option, see the black and white edition ISBN# 979-8739329257 With more than 100 Photographs. This edition is printed in Color to allow for sepia tones (or brown prints) for higher quality pictures and is more expensive than the black and white edition. (Electronic versions may be the same) On July 9th, 1893, the grandson of pioneers, George Alvin Crockett was born in the front room of a farmhouse that still stands on the outskirts of Preston Idaho, in a place called Whitney. He was baptized on July 9th,1901. George (or Geo. for short as seen throughout the journal) started his mission on March 13th, 1916 at the age of 22 and served for 27 months under Melvin J. Ballard. Joseph F. Smith was president of the church at the time. It was a different time period. On May 10th, 1869, only 47 years earlier, the nation was joined from coast to coast, when the final spike was driven into the rails of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah. The west was no longer wild, but it was still an isolated area, where small towns were spread out across the country with homesteads that were located miles from civilization. The world was at war. The great war started July 1914 and the US entry into that conflict happened in the first week of April 1917, 14 months before my grandfather's mission ended. The epidemic known as the Spanish Flu struck the United States on March 11th, 1918, just 3 months before the end of Geo A. Crockett's mission in June. A transition in the Church's mission program was occurring. My Grandfather was part of what some might call the second generation of missionaries born in Brigham Young's "promised land." Only 18 years before George Crockett's mission service, in the April 1898 General conference of the church, it was announced that single women could be called to serve as missionaries. At the same time, as was the case with one of my grandfather's companions, married men were still being called to leave their families and go out into the mission field. Missionaries still went without purse, depending on their faith and the goodness of strangers to provide food and a place to sleep. At times, they would be miles away from any other homestead, and would have to sleep in the open or go without food. When traveling, they might have to bath in the streams, lakes and rivers. Sometimes they would labor for their board and room, or a little bit of money. Missionaries might tract separately during the day. (Tracting referring to the fact that they were visiting homes and distributing "tracts", pamphlets that explained different aspects of the LDS church.) They would spend several hours with people who were interested, sometimes staying up into the early hours of the morning. Testimony to their likeability (and maybe somewhat to my grandfather's surprise, and why it is so often repeated in his journal) are the invitations or words similar to: "They told us to stop back by if ever we were in the area again". Words said by people who would not make such offers if they did not indeed like these young men. He and his companion rented a room in Sedro Woolley WA. on the Skagit river when they were not "traveling". As "traveling missionaries", it is where they would return to check for mail, restock on tracts and books, and rest from their labors. When they were traveling, they might have their mail forwarded to other townships. My grandfather's journal is a record of a portion of his time in the mission field and reveals some of the hardships, and some of the joys. His journal is a testament to the goodness and hospitality of the people in the north west, in the Washington area and into Canada, where families shared what little they had with two men whom they had never met. |
