Frederick Herman Wendrich
Bountiful Transcript
My Brethren and Sister, this is just like coming home. Not that I enjoy this position here tonight. I have dreaded that for the last two weeks since I heard about it. And it’s peculiar how it is that we fret to address an audience of Latter-day Saints. I do, like many others have done before me and I guess always will. We are, I feel, among my own people and at the same time I realize my weakness and imperfections and the fear of the Lord. If we would close this service here, without prolong it with my speech, I think we would be highly edified. I admire the dispatch and the graciousness in which the sacrament was administered by the Aaronic Priesthood. I have admired the singing. The opening song, “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer” touched a chord of many years ago. The singing of the young ladies here, I think it was superb. I see quite a few of the faces I have known in this community. When I enquired about coming in here tonight I was told that they were divided off. I don’t see why they take so many people away, but I guess that they way they go. I know a few of the faces – they are familiar to me. When John Wendell’s name was mentioned as a missionary, it done me good to hear it. That’s the old missionary Wendell family that carries on the Spirit and the tradition that came into that young man’s life to his grandfather and I knew well. And Brother John here in the audience (as we, my family calls him affectionately). He was one of the first men that I shook hands with when I came to Zion. I shook hands with him and I didn’t knew what “Hello” meant. Have you ever been in that predicament – that you come into a land that you can speak to nobody. Oh, everybody want to help you, but they don’t know what to do and how to do it. And you’re just as helpless yourself as a newborn baby – just as helpless.
I’d like to tell you a few things of my early experience – my boyhood days. And I wanted to have it understood, that I have nothing to say to my individual credit. I want it thoroughly understood that anything I have to say – the credit is to my Father in Heaven.
I was born of goodly parents. Grandparents were also devout Christians. I belonged to the Lutheran church. I had belonged to it – our ancestry -- back to the time of Luther. Martin Luther started to reform, but he thought to reform the Catholic church. But in as much as he couldn’t reform it he started a church for himself known as the Evangelischen Lutheran Church. It spread rapidly, all over. The whole village where I came from accepted Luther’s doctrine. And then we had, in the beginning of the 16th Century, the war. From 1618 to 1648, where the Catholic and the Protestantish armies see-sawed to and fro through the country. One was worse than the other in destroying the property, the villages. The village in which I was born and raised was burned to the ground during those thirty years three times. Three times they had to rebuild it. Many of the inhabitants of the village were slaughtered. Some of my ancestors were burned on the stake rather than to deny the faith that they had accepted. My grandfather of father’s side – I passed through the forest many a times , when we came to a certain trail , a cross route, and he always would stop and point out that spot to me where they called in those days any who had left the Catholic faith was called a “ketzer” (sp?) – one that was absolutely not fit to live among human society. He was at liberty as the birds. I always think of it as cruel when our boys take the slingshot or the BB gun and shoot the innocent birds. And just as free as the sparrow is to some of our boys, so free were those who had accepted the Lutheran faith. And I can still see my grandfather standing there on that crossroad in the forest and he would point out to me where one of his ancestors were burned. Oh, they could have denied the faith, rejoined the Catholic church. But rather than denying it they were burned on the stake. And he kept on impressing us (sometimes my brothers and sisters were along) and he impressed so thoroughly on us that devotion of those individuals and how we children should hold fast to what Lehi calls the iron rod. Grandfather didn’t called it that but he thought that the ancestors who considered it worth giving their lives for their beliefs that that was good enough for him. And so you can picture in your mind how we children were impressed. Oh, we had to go – every third Sunday I had to take my turn going to church and early in my youth when I heard the preacher of the village preaching for the Emperor and his household and all the big shots throughout the land and I wondered when he would start to pray for our little folks, for our small-frys. Many times, early as a youngster, I would lay out in the field and watch the stars and the thoughts would come to my mind, “Where was the beginning of our life?” “Did we have an origin before we came here to this life?” “And what was the end?” And I never felt so impressed about it as when they took my Grandfather out from the funeral in his casket – a man who has been a chum to me for so many years. There wasn’t a thing that I couldn’t confide in him, more even than to my father. And I thought everything was taken from me when he went. And I remember that night when I went out into the field to be for myself I didn’t want to let the folks know what kind of a sissy I was that the tears were rolling down my cheeks cause I had loved his companionship. And when I gazed up to the stars and thought about the place where he went it was such a nebulous affair – I had no concrete idea where he was. We believed in the resurrection but it was a very, very nebulous affair. And I asked my Father in Heaven (we were taught early in our youth to pray – mother was as good a praying woman as could be found.). I sometimes think many a times I have to live a good, many years before I reach that standard of perfection and the ??woken?? that she had to our Father in Heaven and to the Savior, Jesus the Christ. Many a times when my grandfather was still alive we would discuss. He would stand on the weaving chair, grandmother was sitting on the old-fashioned spinning wheel and how she would wrap the thread with the spittle. Have you ever seen spinning wheels, some of you oldsters you know what I’m talking about. And they would tell us of bygone days and the history of the prople. Grandfather who was mayor of the village for a number of years. He knew the 1,500 families, everyone by his first name, he knew them by heart. He knew has they had intermarried together. And you can imagine when those two oldsters were sitting together and they discussed the history of bygone days – how Napoleon had come with his armies through that village over to Russia in the Spring of 1812. How every night the barns were filled with soldiers laying down on the straw. In the morning they would leave and late in the afternoon others would come and so it went on for weeks and weeks. Finally, when they returned – not many returned on that occasion according to history. But the home was turned into a field hospital. A French Officer who had died in the place and had got quite familiar with grandpa (that was my third-great grandfather – the grandfather to my living grandfather). He was able to speak the French language and therefore they got quite acquainted with each other – how he turned over his personal sword and it was still in the family when I left.
I was asked last Summer when I visited my daughter in Idaho, “What were the motives that I had joined the Mormon church?” Well, I said, there had been so many motives. After my grandfather had died, grandmother preceded him in death, and I questioned myself. I thought many times about the discourses I had with him, about the human relationship and how we were all related together, how we all originated from one couple, Adam and Eve, and many perplexing questions that many a youngster (you have it in your own family) will throw at you. And sometimes you wish you could walk off in order not to answer it. Well many of the things were unanswered. But I was not satisfied with their religion that I had received although I regard it most highly for the sake of my ancestors and what they went through.
I had a cousin. He had joined a church from America called the Mormons – a terrible bunch and sect of people, the most despised people on the face of the earth. And as mother heard about it (that cousin of mine—we had laid together as babies in one basket) we hadn’t seen each other ‘til we became about twenty years of age and he came and visited me and he told me about those people that came, that sent missionaries from America. And of course we ridiculed him. We didn’t want that sect to get a footing into our faith and put their feet into our family. So we pushed him aside. But the few things that he had told me put me to think. Mother, of course she heard about it too and she warned that we should not make any further investigations. Father didn’t say anything, in fact I think that he didn’t even knew anything about it. We didn’t dare to tell him because I knew he would have blown the top, so to say. Our father’s word was law, we never dared to argue with him – we had many a friendly chat with mother. But we knew how far it was permissible to go even with her. But as it is in all things, the forbidden things are first investigated.
It was shortly that I (inasmuch as I was the oldest in the family and my brothers and sisters became old enough that they could help on the place) so I was sent to a place, to what you call here a good sized ranch to learn how they handle things on a bigger scale. And naturally I came very close – I worked on one side of the street and my cousin who had joined that Mormon outfit, he lived on the other side of the street. And we came quite frequently together. I could never have his association on Sunday because he had to go to meetings. I couldn’t have his association on Wednesdays, he would go to his Bible class, he would go to his church. I went to the church in that town, that magnificent cathedral. I still see myself sitting in there in that magnificent, palatial home of a church, adorned with all kinds of beautiful statuary, gilded. And when I walked out of that magnificent cathedral I felt just as empty as when I went in. Finally, one Sunday, my cousin says, “Why don’t you go to my church once?” “Okay, it’s a deal.” I went with him. I still see myself coming into that little, dilapidated back room in a side street. It was just as despised and forsaken and forlorn as the people itself were, I guess. They were not even permitted to held their meetings in an open space. And I remember speaking to my cousin after we left that meeting. One man talked about a man named Joseph Smith and another talked about something else and of course it was all Chinese to me, so to speak. And I said to my cousin, “How can you associate yourself with such people, the people that were there were the poor of the land. They came from distant places – some they peddled their bicycles from as far as a couple of miles. I felt like and I ridiculed him. I razed him, called his attention to the fame of his ancestors. They were just as mine had been in the days of which I spoke to you. I could not shake him. I went home. I thought I had done a wonderful work. I tapped my chest. I thought I had done a wonderful job. I thought I had rescued my cousin. But when the other Sunday come I couldn’t see my cousin. And I went on for several months struggling between my own self. I wasn’t satisfied, I had no peace of mind, and the more I wanted to keep away from Mormonism, the more I read about in the scriptures, the more I felt that they had something that was superior to any people on the face of the earth. Finally, I remember it was one evening, it was just beginning to get dark. I was through with my work. I laid on my bed and I was so sick and disgusted, my cousin came in. “Where have you been all the months?” “Well, I figured you go through the same period that I went through.” And he sat down and told me -- we just had an old-fashioned heart-to-heart talk. He told me of the things he went through and when he was through all, it was through the same mental agony, conditions and mental sufferings that I had passed through. And I said, “Well, what can we do about it? You seem to be always happy, always smiling? Everything goes good with you.” And he said, “Well, that is something you just have to battle out within your own self.”
So I read more in the scriptures. The following Wednesday I went over to his place and picked him up to take him to meeting. And I still see the old rusty, smoky coal-oil farm lantern as most of you still see around on the farm, standing on that little table in the room where he got ready for the meeting and he said, “There is a Book of Mormon. Why don’t you look at it while I get ready?” I got to tell you, I had never seen a Book of Mormon before, but I had heard of it. And I opened that Book of Mormon and my eyes fell upon the testimony of the three witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, David Whitmer. And when I opened that and read in my native tongue, “Be it known to all nations, kindred, tongues and people unto whom this work may come . . . .” and so on, I finished it and closed the book and I got a testimony right there that this book was a writing inspired by a man of God. I read that book. I read it again when I came across the Atlantic. And tears were rolling down my cheeks for gratefulness for when I read that part where the Savior comes in Third Nephi to this continent and established his Church here on earth – that was another testimony to me. And I want to tell you brethren and sisters, the Book of Mormon is the most outstanding piece of literature that this continent has produced.
And the Bible – I remember I was scolded as a youngster. I just loved to read the Old Testament characters from a historical and geographical standpoint, not so much in those days from a religious standpoint. I was impressed by those old biblical characters and while they were thousands of years away from us, to me it just seemed like it was only yesterday. Take the story of Jacob of old, the way he had to leave his father’s household. I thought about him so many times. The way he left his father’s household under the conditions (if you’ve ever read this story, read it again –I bet you get a kick out of it just like I do.) How his mother plotted for him that he get the blessings, the firstborn blessings, the birthright. She knew what she was talking and what she was doing, even if she plotted against her husband and her former son (Esau). Why, before he was born she had a revelation, she knew which one would come first and how one would hold the other by the heel and how the second would become the firstborn. And don’t think that Rebecca didn’t remember all those things through the years to come. And you remember the story how Esau was sent out to get some game, and how he should prepare it for his father in order to get his patriarchal blessing. And how Rebecca stood by the door and listened to it and heard it. And how she rushed in and get some kids and prepared it for him. And how he put it in and how Esau was wroth afterwards because he had lost the blessings, the birthright. You know how he lost his birthright – by marrying out of the posterity, out of his father’s household. But, the point that I like to leave you with is the testimony of Jacob. I didn’t have to leave under similar conditions, but I was a poor as Jacob was. All I had was a cane. I still have it and keep it as a souvenir. It may not be worth a hill of beans but to my memory it is worth a lot. I remember when Jacob left, he was out, night overtook him. How he laid down, picked up a few stones and used them as a pillow to sleep on and how he had the dream that the ladder was reaching from the heavens to the earth and how the angels were descending up and down. And how he woke up in the dawn of the morning. I can picture how he shook himself and thought about that dream and he said, “This surely is a glorious place. Surely the Lord has been here and I knew it not.” And to him it was a sanctified place. More sanctified that all the cathedrals with all their splendor in all the earth. He took stones and set them together as an altar. He poured oil on it and he made a covenant with the Lord, that if he would bring him to that land to which he was going and if he would return him to his father’s household. And we know it took about twenty years before he ever returned. That he would give the Lord a tenth of all that he made. And when you think of it how he returned – like a big army with all his herds and cattle. It takes too long to continue on that story. But it is a wonderful story. How he split his posterity and his cattle when he met his brother Esau, he thought if his brother Esau should fight against him, if he had them all in one bunch if he would get licked why he had everything lost but if he had it in two bunches he might save at least one part of his posterity. The story goes on. They met under the most favorable, brotherly conditions. Esau and Jacob fell around each other’s neck and wept for joy. One blessed the other as really two brothers should do.
As I was saying, I was just as poor as Jacob when I came here, I couldn’t even say, “Hello” as I said in the beginning. But I have been grateful for coming here. I remember when I stood on the Oregon Shortline Depot that morning and all my fellow passengers from the Scandinavian countries and from Holland had left me and a woman approached me (Sister Fromme, I think Brother Randall still remembers her). She talked to me. I don’t know what she talked. Finally, she talked in my native tongue and she asked me if I had anybody and I told her no, I didn’t know anybody and she took me to her place and I had my home there. It was an answer to prayer. That morning, here between Ogden and Salt Lake I felt especially to pray that the Lord might provide somebody. I thanked him most graciously and abundantly that he had brought me so far. But I felt that my struggle for existence was just beginning. And I asked him if he would provide for me. And he provided that good woman. She took me to her home and kept me as her own son until I could navigate for myself.
I do remember that day on the ship before we came to Quebec when the two immigration commissioners from the United States came on ship to examine our passports. I had traveled so far through five countries without a passport. And you can imagine that I was worried. I didn’t enter an American seaport because the Imperial Government of Germany by that time had a government agent in every United States seaport examine their own subject’s papers. That’s why I entered through Canada. But what I want to leave with you is a testimony. I only had twenty-five dollars in my possession. I had sufficient funds when I left but I had it squandered because I traveled First Class on ship and rail and bought new outfits before I left. I figured the more respectable I looked and the more respectable I travel the least will the authorities suspect me as one that was not desired. A lady approached me on the ship. One of them said to me, that was a few days earlier, she had read the ship register and seen my name on it she was able to use my native tongue. I had never met her before. She said, “How is it that some of those Mormon missionaries got hold of you? You seem to be intelligent enough that you had sense enough not to join that outfit. What will it be, in a couple of years you will be disgusted and you will want to return?” I said, “Madam, I pray that the day shall never come that I regret that I come to the shores of the United States.” But that lady that questioned me the day before we entered Quebec . . . . I kept myself aloof from the people. The less I had to do with other people the safer I felt. I didn’t want them to know that I was traveling without passport or any identification. And she said to me (she had such a winning way that you couldn’t help but trust her) and she said to me, “Is it a money matter that is worrying you?” I said, “How you know it?” “Well now, you may just as well face it. I have sufficient money here. You know you have to have $50.00 in your possession tomorrow and if you don’t have it they send you back. How much you got?” I said, “I got $25.00.” She opened her purse and said, “Here’s $25.00. When you have received your pass then you can hand it back to me.” Well I had prayed before that I might get sufficient means in my profession and I would not be lacking for $50.00. After I received my pass I hand it back to her. I never see her afterwards, after I left the ship. But to me it was a testimony.
I remember that Saturday evening at 8:00 when I was baptized. It was on the 21st of December, two days before the Prophets birthday. Cold as it is in December we didn’t have to cut any ice but I didn’t felt any cold. I had quite an argument before I joined the church with the missionaries who wanted to rush me to join the church. I said, “I’m not fit to join your church.” I looked upon the missionaries, your missionaries are the servant of God, and nothing else. We didn’t see their human frailty, they were just servants of the Most High, commissioned like the Apostles of old to preach the Gospel. And he quoted to me from one of the prophets. He said, “If your sins be as red as blood I will make them white as snow” and so on. I said, “Ah, you fellows are so slick you have a quotational scripture for everything that we oppose. Well, I said, “Where can you prove to me?” and he said, “It’s in the Bible” and as luck would have it, he found it. When we came on the water’s edge and I was baptized and they were just ready to confirm me and he said, “Uh oh, we have to baptize you again. I left your initials out.” And I thought, “Well, glory me, I sure must be a wicked individual that you have to baptize me twice.” Well, as comical as it must seem, I meant it. But no dire results came from it, from the second baptism. But I thought about it many times.
And so in my life have come many testimonies. And I don’t want to tire and wear you out. I remember, among other things, when I stood with my mother in her garden spot a few months after I had joined the church. She questioned me the day before if I had joined that terrible outfit from America. I said, “Yes, mother.” And she shrunk back from me as if a rattlesnake had bit her. She said, “What will father say?” I said, “Never mind for father. I feel that I have to stand on my own feet. I feel that I have to be responsible for my own self.” And I believe father never found out ‘til I came to America. But the day after that interview and that admission to mother we stood in the garden. It was 8:00 in the morning. Father wanted me to help him on the farm plot, but she persisted over him that I should help her in the garden. It was 8:00 in the morning when she stopped me -- father was gone. And she said, “Now Fred, I want you to tell me something about that church that you have joined.” And from then on I was the speaker and she done the listening. Oh, she interrupted me a few times with questions that she fired at me. But when quarter to twelve come and she looked up and she see father coming with the team over the hill she says, “My goodness, we haven’t done a thing.” I ?? the last time I preached the Gospel to her and what I preached I do not know. But I do remember how she patted me on the back and she said, “Stay with it. You’ve got something, something superior.”
I want to tell you one more thing before I sit down. I could never bring it over my mind that I should leave mother. I told the missionary who induced me to come to America. He said on one occasion, after he had heard that I was drafted in the army, that the blood of the Latter-day Saints was too precious and it shouldn’t be spilled on the battlefields of Europe. That was six months before the First World War. We knew, the Saints knew that there was something terrible coming. Even if some leaders of the nations said that it was impossible that a war could come. But the Saints felt it under the inspiration of the Lord. And that’s why that missionary made that statement. And that statement of his put me to think, and one evening we were together in one of the parks of that city and we were sitting down from nine o’clock ‘til two in the morning and we went pro and con over the details how it would be if I left, if I skipped the service. How I could get away and travel through five counties without a passport. And how I could do the __ harm to mother. I could not tell anybody. And how he always lay all my pessimism aside. How he assured me that the Spirit of the Lord would take care of mother. That I should not worry about it and go in peace. He told me how I should arrange my finances—to get the savings out of my father’s brother’s hands under the pretense of investing other investments where I would make more money. And when I think through all that journey, how the money came in my possession without any other part in doing it. And when I asked that one day, I remember that it was also a upper room and I asked the Lord that he should show me a way and it was the right thing to go and affiliate myself with the Saints in Utah. I asked him I didn’t expect of him to show me in a spectacular way by angels and other manifestations but he could show it to me in such a humble and unsignificant way and at the same time to know for myself a surety. I do remember after I got off of my knees, nothing was shown. I walked down the stairway and I still see my coat hanging there with the Bible in the inside pocket. It was flopped back. When I came to the coat, I reached for it and I opened it up and I beheld that piece of scripture, and it has become a testimony to me and I leave it to you for what its worth. My eyes fell on that piece of scripture, “He that cannot leave father or mother, house or home for my sake or the gospels, is mine not worth.” I closed that book. I thanked my Father in Heaven. To me it was the greatest testimony that had ever come in my life. And from that day on I never worried. Oh, I worried and I came through the streets of foreign countries and didn’t knew which turn in the road I should take or on which train I should take in the depots when you can’t ask anybody. I think it was a privilege to me and it shall be a privilege to all of us when we become so little and dependent as a little child and ask the Good Man Above for his guidance and direction. Nothing to it when we have the pocket full of money and we know and journey to and fro and we know every direction and every corner of the road. But you must become as a little child to appreciate your Father in Heaven. I thank God for the testimony of those people that have been before us -- for the people of the early days. I read their history of our people long before I joined this church. And I compared their suffering and their devotion and their integrity with my ancestors. Your songs of Zion have done more to convert me and countless others of converts for they carry something with them that touches the heart. And even if I can’t hold a tune, but the songs of Zion are dear to me. I thank God for the youth of this church and how they carry on this work. There never have been so many young folks working in the church as there are at the present time. And to me it is the fulfillment of the words of the Lord and the prophets, that this work never shall be taken from the earth again until the sons of Levi do offer up a offering in righteousness. And may God bless them all and may he preserve the testimony that has come to us as we may treasure and retain it, I pray in the Name of Jesus, Amen.”