Report on the St. George Stake

My dear brethren and sisters, I appreciate very much the opportunity given me to report the condition of the people in the St. George Stake of Zion. Ours is a stake of magnificent distances, requiring about eleven hundred miles to travel, all by team, to reach the people. There are twenty-two wards, most of them small. We have no railroad, no corporations, and not much of the wealth of the world to worry us. The stranger says it is a God-forsaken country; but we do not believe him, for we know better. The Lord has justified the wisdom of the servants of God in colonizing this semi-arid region. The early pioneers have nearly all passed away; but their sons and daughters have regarded the call of their parents as equally binding upon them, and they have remained In the country, and have toiled and struggled and wrung from the elements a fairly comfortable subsistence. There is an affection in the hearts of the people for the sands and the rocks that have developed strength in them. After all, our best crop has been men and women. We have been engaged in building extensive canals.. The rives has washed some of our land away; and one canal, at an expense 'of one hundred thousand dollars and ten years in building, has just been completed and water turned upon the land. Another reservoir scheme has been perfected, and we are getting this spring, for the first time, the benefits of that enterprise. Years ago we had plenty of rain, but for the last fifteen years there has been drouth. During the last winter, however, the rains have come up from the Gulf of California and settled down over the rim of the basin, and we have had rain, and rain, and glorious rain. We have not had such rain for twenty years. So we are happy, we are hopeful, we are contented, we are united. I need scarcely say to you that a people who have remained loyal to the country to which the servants of God called them, are still loyal to the servants of God. ¶

Personally, I feel well in the Gospel. Like Elder Ben E. Rich, I can say , that there never was a time in my life when I was so well satisfied with the Church of God and the administration of His servants as I am today. I rejoice in the fact that I have a testimony for myself that this is the work of God. I hope I shall always prove true and faithful to it; for I can conceive of no worse spectacle than for the Saints to tear down the work of their fathers. I have rejoiced in the spirit of this conference and in the spirit of the brethren who have spoken. I testify that this spirit is of God. I pray God to bless us as a people, especially the young, that we may be true and faithful, and that the spirit of this conference may go as a great ground swell and penetrate throughout the length and breadth of the land, and stir up the souls of the people of Zion unto faithfulness, to seek God and keep His commandments. Amen. ¶