Let Us Pray

While traveling across Nebraska Territory, severe thunderstorms occasionally threatened the Willie handcart company. Thirteen-year-old Betsey Smith gave a description of what happened in one of these instances:

“The wind . . . kept blowing harder until it became fierce. Clouds arose, [and] the thunder and lightning were appalling. Even the ox teams ahead refused to face the storm. Our captain . . . stepped into the middle of the road, bared his head to the storm, and every man, as he came up, stood by him with bared head – one hundred carts, their pullers and pushers, looking to their captain for counsel. The captain said, ‘Let us pray.’ And there was offered such a prayer! He told the Lord our circumstances. He talked to God, as one man talks to another, and as if the Lord was very near. I felt that he was; and many others felt the same. Then the storm parted to the right and to the left! We hurried on to camp, got our tents pitched, and some fires built, when the storm burst in all its fury!”

Isaiah 51:15: “But I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The Lord of hosts is his name.”