Christmas Day

Clan Whipple took a Sabbath Day/Christmas Day stroll along the Lehi Trail out to the banks of the Salt River on the north end of Mesa. I'm a great lover of the desert and all of it's beauty and solitude, but, the banks of the Salt River around here are not representative of the beauty of the desert...  

There's a monument out there that was built on the centennial celebration of the day in 1877 that the Mormon Pioneers crossed the river to create a settlement called Lehi which is now Mesa, Arizona.  

I don't know the history but it appears that a few wards and stakes placed concrete markers with hand prints and signatures in 1977 when the little monument was built.  They are mostly strewn about randomly. 

The Salt River is empty right now.  There are two dams upstream a few miles that lift the river into the irrigation canals that feed most of the farm land and citrus orchards and create a few recreational lakes.  We are standing on the banks about 40 feet above the river bed.  In the late Winter and early Spring, when the snow is melting off off the mountains, the river is a raging torrent that would reach up to our feet at the edge there.  Here's me and Shaw throwing rocks off the edge.  (It's a man thing...)  

On closer inspection, Lesa found somebody named "Shaw W." who left a hand print in 1977 and signed their name.  Shaw's left hand is almost as big as that person's was.   

The Mormon Settlers arrived in March of 1877 and I'm sure they had no idea what they were in for that first summer with temperatures hovering at 105-110 degrees for 45 days at the peak of the summer months. There is an Indian Reservation on the other side of the river and that land is largely undeveloped and so I imagine that the crossing spot is largely they way they found it 134 years ago. I bet they would be tickled to see this brand new air-conditioned Stake Center just up the banks from where they crossed.  

Just step away from this spot and there are probably 50 meetinghouses and a Temple (Mesa) within walking distance.  There are two more temples 30 minutes away by car (Gilbert and Phoenix) and still two additional temples 2 1/2 hours away by car (Gila Valley and Snowflake).  President James E Faust visited here just before he died and confirmed that there would be still more in the coming decade.  The community of Lehi was annexed by the city of Mesa 40 years ago and Mesa has nearly a half million residents now.  There are a quarter of a million Latter-Day Saints in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and the state of Arizona has about 350,000 Latter-Day Saints!

Several years ago, on the occasion of the dedication of the Nauvoo,Illinois Temple, which our family watched on satellite, President Gordon B Hinckley invited the local attendees to go walk along the banks of the Mississippi River beside the temple before they headed for home and think about the people who walked away from their homes and businesses and farms under duress 170 years ago and sacrificed so much.  They fled the United States because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.  They gathered in the Salt Lake Valley which was part of Mexico at the time.  Brigham Young then sent people to settle in southern Utah, Idaho,  Arizona, California, Wyoming and other places to build communities and plant trees and make farmland.

On our walk today, I thought about those people from Nauvoo and also the next generation of those people who then left Salt Lake on assignment to come to this inhospitable place and try to make a go of it. It seems to  have worked and I was filled with gratitude for them.