The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Brigham Young felt the gospel fire and missionary spirit begin to blaze within him as he sat wet following his baptism and ordination to the office of elder in the newly organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 14, 1832.
“I wanted to thunder and roar out the gospel to the nations,” he said years later. The feeling “burned in my bones like fire pent up. … Nothing would satisfy me but to cry abroad in the world, what the Lord was doing in the latter-days. … I had to go out and preach, lest my bones should consume within me.”
Many know the general details of what Young went on to do after his conversion — serving missions, becoming an Apostle and the second president of the Church, guiding thousands of Saints to the Great Salt Lake Valley and colonizing the west.
What few know are the day-to-day details of Young’s life.
That will change in the coming years as The Brigham Young Center produces the Brigham Young Papers, beginning with “The Brigham Young Journals, Vol. 1, April 1832 to Feb. 1846.”
While it appears to come on the heels of the now-completed Joseph Smith Papers, the Brigham Young Papers project actually launched five years ago. The plan is to make the bulk of Brigham’s documents available online, with a small subset published in print, including journals, letters and personal writings. The project will also provide information about the man and the world he lived in.
The first volume of the journals series focuses on Brigham’s life before coming to Utah, said Ronald K. Esplin, director of the Brigham Young Papers project and general editor of the Brigham Young Journals.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
