Subject: Nathan LeRoy Smith
Born: 17 July 1892, Cleveland, Franklin, Idaho
Died: 17 May 1987, Preston, Franklin, Idaho
Spouse: Mary Burton
Writer: Nathan LeRoy Smith (self)
Relationship of Subject to Roland K. Smith: Grandfather
Joe Ransom and I got a call to take a missionary course at the old Onieda Academy in Preston, Idaho in the fall of 1911. We lived quite a distance away so we didn't go steady. But we both made the course. A man by the name of John Johnson was the theology teacher and he was really a good teacher.
I received my mission call to the Samoan Islands in the late summer of 1912. I was working on a threshing machine not very far from home and I went down to the house for something just after the mail came. Mother said I had a letter from the P.O. (That meant a letter from the head of the church from Salt Lake or the President's Office.) Mother had read it and I read it and said "well I guess that's all right" or something like that and mother said "Well, its way down to them Islands in the Pacific".
Dad took me on a train on December 9, 1912 to Uncle Jed's at Roy, Utah (probably Jeddie Le Roy Miles (ed)) and then Uncle Jed was determined to take us to Salt Lake so he hooked up a horse and buggy and took us to Salt Lake City. It was December and cold but he took us on to Salt Lake that day and we didn't buy a ticket from there on down. Uncle Jed stayed with us all that day and he was determined to buy me all the books I would need. He bought me the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
The next day I went through the temple for my endowments and was set apart for my mission. I was promised many blessings. (I had that written in my diary and who set me apart but can't remember and it was burned when the home in Cleveland burned). I remember one thing that was promised me and that was I would learn the language easily.
Joe Ransom (probably Joseph Ransom, son of Milo Ames Ransom and Mary Walton (ed.)) received his mission call to the Samoan Islands the same time I did. We left Salt Lake on the train for the Islands the 12th hour of the 12th day of the 12th month of 1912. This was a date that wouldn't come again for a hundred years. I remember it was a slow train and going up kind of a valley there was a small stream of water and by golly that engineer stopped the train and let a man get out and go fishing.
We took a steamboat from San Francisco to the Islands and it took about three weeks to reach Samoa. After leaving San Francisco the ocean was awfully rough. Ninety percent of the passengers were out around the rail feeding the fish. But I never got sick, just a little bit that first meal. There were some missionaries going part way and some of them were terribly ill. They couldn't even get out of their bunks.
We stopped at Honolulu for a day and went to the mission headquarters. I had never ridden in an automobile and we hired a tourist guide and he took us around the island and showed us where they were raising rice, pineapples, bananas, and all the tropical fruit. I remember pulling into Honolulu. Our boat was a big boat and it was going right slow through the water. The native boys from the Hawaiian Islands swam out to meet our boat. Those little boys weren't over ten or twelve years and they would hang on to the front of the boat and people would throw coins into the water. Those little guys would dive down and pretty soon they'd come up and show you that they had the coin. They were wonderful swimmers.
We also stopped at Ponga Ponga. The United States still owns that island. That is the most beautiful harbor in the whole world. The United States owned Ponga Ponga because it was a coaling station and they could store coal there for their big battleships in the mid Pacific. The harbor was a narrow place just wide enough for a steamship. There were great big high mountains on every side covered with vegetation. We pulled in there in the early morning and we all stood on deck looking up at those mountains covered with cliffs and trees with vines growing to the top and then hanging down and flowers were blooming everywhere.
When we pulled into the harbor we found out we had to go on to another island seventy-five miles away. We didn't stay there overnight but by evening had boarded a small boat to take us to the other island. That was an experience I will always remember because that little boat was only about thirty feet long by twelve feet across. It was covered over by an old top and had a little rail sticking up about a foot high all the way around it. We all sat on the top. The boat didn't have any restrooms and the men and women sitting on top of the boat would find their restroom over the rail. The passengers were missionaries and islanders. One man was down in the steerage in the bottom taking care of the steering of the boat and the power. It had a gasoline motor and that motor chugged, chugged, and chugged all night long. And it rained as we sat on top of that old cover but it wasn't very cold. The rain ran off us all night long and the waves would slap up against us.
The next morning at daylight we pulled into the harbor at Samoa. The shoreline sloped out so they couldn't take the boat all the way to the shore but stopped where the water was three feet deep. That was as far as they could get. Several of the large islanders waded out and carried the missionaries and their luggage ashore. They could lock their fingers behind them in cup shape and you would put your knee in that cup and your arms over their shoulders and away they would go with you. Joe Ransom and I were the two that landed there.
The next day we had a meeting with the Elders and Mission President, Edward J. Woods. President Woods was Mission President down there two different times and I didn't see him again until we went to Canada to see Ross (Nathan's son) at a Mission Conference. President Woods was Mission President there and he spoke to the missionaries telling them some of his experiences in the islands. But at that meeting in Samoa he said. "Well, Elder Ransom will stay and work here in Samoa and Elder Smith, you will go on to the "Friendly Islands". My original call was to Samoa but President Wood said I was to go on to the Tongan Islands. Those islands were a thousand miles away but I didn't worry. I didn't worry a bit.
On the trip to the Tongan Islands I rode on quite a big steamship. I had a gold case watch that my Dad had given me and a great big Negro porter stole it. Like a fool, I hung my coat by one of the portholes and one of the porters reached his hand in and took the watch out of my pocket. So I finally bought a dollar watch and had a dollar watch with me all the time I was on my mission. And when I came home after completing my mission my Dad gave me another watch and I lost that in a load of grain.
But I had landed in Tonga! They had a large deep harbor there where a ship could go in and dock. Some of the missionaries met me along with Elder Wiser and that same day Elder Wiser and I walked eleven miles to the west end of the island. I had December heavy clothing on and it was awfully hot because it was the warm season there. When we got part way we sat down under some large palm trees (coconut trees) and he coaxed me to sing. He had been there about three years and he said "Sing something. Do you know any of the modern songs?" I sang the song that had become popular just before I left the states about an Indian girl, a shy little prairie maid called "Red Wing". That night I stayed with Elder Clarence Wiser from Lewiston, Utah (just below Preston).
There were six missionaries on the island counting me. They were Frank Winn, the Conference President from Smithfield, Utah, Elder Pack from Canada, Elder Miller from Canada, Elder Wiser from Lewiston, Utah, and Elder Huntsman from Shelly, Idaho. The church didn't own any property on the island or have any place for us to stay. The next morning I walked another four or five miles to an Elder Huntsman who hadn't been in the mission field very long. The other group of missionaries were the first group sent to those islands and we were the second. When I got there one family had been baptized. I stayed with Elder Huntsman for two weeks. I could say a few words in Tongan. On the way to Elder Huntsman I met some natives and a few boys and tried to explain who I was. When I'd tell them I was a Mormon they'd point me on and say a "Mormon over there". There was a man who ran a little store and was friendly to the Mormons and he rented a little building that Elder Huntsman lived in. Elder Huntsman wrote a few lines out for me to speak in Sunday School. There were a few investigators and the man who ran the trading post and his family came to the meeting. I could say just a few words and I read just a few lines in my first church meeting in Tonga. Something they haven't done very often in the church and probably just there but each Elder lived alone without a companion and they found out later on it wasn't good. There were some Elders that got on the wrong track.
Elder Huntsman was from Blackfoot, Idaho and had a wife and two little babies. Later on after the war he was called to go back down there as Mission President and he took his wife and children and they had two more children down there. He came to our home once in Cleveland to visit when he and Elder Beatty were traveling through.
I stayed with Elder Huntsman two weeks then I was transferred to the other end of the island to the largest village on Tonga with about seven thousand living there. I walked, and walked, and walked, and got to where the Conference President lived, Elder Winn, and he went with me to the end of the island and we found a native house with a thatched roof for me to live in. Natives lived in part of it and I could teach school in part of it. Elder Winn stayed the first day and bought some little primers and a couple of blackboards and started me out and, boy, it wasn't long before I had fifty or sixty students. I stayed a year and taught school and taught music. Some of those kids could really sing, they were the best I've ever heard. I stayed there a year.
A funny thing happened after I arrived in my first area. When I was set apart for my mission the apostle promised me I would become very fluent in the language and it would be easy for me. It was the custom for the missionaries to spend a little time tracting each evening to different homes. We didn't have tracts but we would go talk to the people. I saw a group of men in a native hut conversing like they do there and I went and joined the group. They were sitting in a circle on the floor on woven mats smoking their cigars and drinking from a bowl in the center. They call the bowl their kava bowl. The drink was made out of a root. They lay the root on a rock and pound it with another rock, mix it with water and strain the juice out. They had native girls making the drink and rolling their cigars. Down there you didn't knock on the door. You just opened the door and walked in. I did that, I just walked in and joined the group.
I noticed that there was a man among them that seemed to know current events and he could understand a little bit of English and I could understand a few words of Tongan so we conversed some. I noticed he was awfully interested in what I was doing. He questioned me concerning the school and he invited me back. I didn't learn until several weeks later that he was the head man of that village of seven thousand. He was the main chief in that part of the island. He was interested in the school work and he wanted the young children to learn English. He took an interest in me and started to teach me the Tongan language.
The chief would take me places while he was teaching me the language. He invited me out into the lagoon fishing and while we were there he would teach me the language. The chief spent hours with me and it seemed like after a month or two that language began to run through my mind and I would dream dreams and I would hear words that I never remembered hearing. It came to me so fast. It wasn't very long until I was holding Sunday School and holding night meetings and conducting and doing the whole thing because I was alone in that village which was the largest on the Island. He kept teaching me the language. I had the Tongan and English Bibles and I would lay them side by side and take a verse of English and try to read it in Tongan. I learned the alphabet and the language isn't hard to learn to read. Every letter has just one sound. It wasn't long 'til I was dreaming those words and reading those words. I held Sunday School every Sunday and I would get a few pupils and then their parents would come and pretty soon I had a good group.
Oh, the chief had a beautiful boat, a canoe handmade out of a big log but it had a side rigger on so it wouldn't tip over. He tried to teach me to spear fish and I did try. He had a six or seven foot shaft with a barbed spear on the tip so the fish couldn't get loose. You would paddle that boat just as hard as you could in the lagoon and the water was clear and still. The big waves didn't come in and the chief stood in the front of the boat and when he saw a fish he drove that spear down into the water. Every once in a while he came up with a fish. But I couldn't do it, I never did. The chief was really a friend of mine and helped me learn different expressions in their language. His name was Kanuvala and he was fifty or sixty years old.
One night, just about dark, a man came in and told me his baby had died and the other church wouldn't give it a funeral because it hadn't been named and sprinkled or baptized, and the baby was lost. He wanted to know if I would come and give it a funeral. I thought it over a little while and I said "Yes, I'll come." They can't keep a corpse over a day and they gather at dawn and hold their funerals at sun-up. I had to be there early so I got my scriptures and I read about Jesus loving little children and I got all I could on the Savior and children and I went about three miles to where the funeral was to be held. The man was sure glad I had come. There was quite a crowd standing around the grave side. So I sang a song and I prayed. I could read pretty good so I read those passages of scriptures and I said a few words and went home. That stirred up a hornets nest among the other churches.
The largest mountain on the island was just a little knell that was built up with graves. When a person died they dug a grave and buried him, covering him up with sand the depth of another body. when someone else in the family died they uncovered the sand and buried that person on top of the first corpse then covering more sand on top.
A chief from another village brought his little two year old daughter to me and wanted her to come to my school. I told him yes. She learned English faster than the other children and her father just beamed when he listened to her. I had to learn to count English money, pence, twopence, etc. It is a lot more complicated than United States.
There was a conference, a year after I was transferred to that large village, back in the place where I was stationed (Foui) with Elder Huntsman because there was a larger building that could be used. The mission president was new, a man by the name of Nelson in Samoa. He came to the conference with another Elder Krentz, who was a musician and had organized a band with the Samoans. They had a beautiful band and they could really play their instruments. So President Nelson brought a few people, the band, and Elder Krentz from Samoa, one thousand miles away, and they played at different villages and at the conference.
Each one of the missionaries put on a program with the children from his school the night before the conference. The islanders gathered up carts (all their transportation or freighting was with a cart pulled by one horse) and loaded people in those carts and traveled about thirty miles to get to where we had the program. Each school was really in competition. And if I do say it, mine took the blue ribbon.
My folks had sent a lot of songs and I had studied music during that first year. I never saw a piano on the island but I could sing any song if I could just see the music. I learned the English method where notes were represented by figures and time by dots and it wasn't too hard to learn. The Tongans did all their singing by doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, te, doh, and they could hit their tone just as easy as could be. I started studying that method and pretty soon I could hit the tones also. The elders kind of laughed at me for singing that way but before I left that area they wanted me to teach them that method. I learned it from a book the folks sent to me that the old school teacher, Mr. Beckstead, gave them for me. The book had the lessons in front and in the back were some school type songs. The natives liked this music. They had been to other churches and sang their songs but, boy, they liked the music more lively, so I taught them quite a few of those songs and the people thought it was wonderful. They couldn't understand the words because the children were singing in English but they loved the music.
I was the first speaker at the conference. There was quite a few people there. I guess this is bragging a little, but when I got through the guy that ran the trading post and some of the natives came up and I walked down and they circled around me and that guy said "It's a miracle It's a miracle! No white man has ever learned the native tongue like that. He's got the language of the chiefs. It's a miracle!" Of course he didn't know the most prominent chief on the other end of the island had spent hours helping me learn the language. The chiefs have a little superior language than the people. They use it to orate in all their celebrations.
After the first session of conference we had four baptisms. There were five missionaries and a group of people that walked about a half mile to the ocean. When we came back we laid hands on their heads and they received the Holy Ghost and were made members of the Church.
The next session several elders talked and then they held the last meeting of conference and asked me to talk again. I was the only missionary that was asked to talk twice. I took authority as my subject and I showed in the Bible where Phillip and some others had been baptizing but they didn't have the authority to lay on hands for the Gift of the Holy Ghost. They had to wait for others to come from Jerusalem to lay on hands to give them the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I quoted that from the Bible and told them the conditions of authority. I received some praise over that talk. It gave the people something to think about.
When I came off my mission President Frank Winn came to me and ask me to help him translate the Book of Mormon. The church wanted him to translate the Book of Mormon into Tongan. He said yes, he had the grammar but he wanted me to help him because I knew the better part of the language, the part the chiefs spoke. He thought that should be in the Book of Mormon. But I never had the chance. I was called into the army and they couldn't make contact with me.
Another experience I had on my mission was an accident. Elder Huntsman and another Elder came out to where I was laboring to Haa-coma. We didn't have very far to walk, about one half mile, down to the ocean to take a swim. There was a place where we could swim without being in the open ocean. On this island where I was laboring there wasn't very much water so we generally went down to the ocean to bath. This day it was raining and the sea was rough with large swells and waves out in the ocean. But the channel was quiet and because of the rain there was a topping of foam on the water. We undressed in a coral rock cave and left our clothes and put on our bathing suits and we put on rubber shoes to go the few hundred yards down to where we could swim. It was a horseshoe channel around a small island. I was the first there and I dove into the channel and swam across onto an island. The other two elders followed me over there. Then I moved fifty or sixty feet to a higher point and I said "This is the place to dive in". It looked like a beautiful place, about twenty or thirty feet down to the water.
I hadn't anymore than went under the water that I came feet first right back out. I had hit a coral formation that stood up just like a post under the water. The elders knew I was hurt and called "We're coming! We're coming! Elder Huntsman called "I will be there to help you" and I said "I can make it myself." The blood was flying out and coloring the water quite a little. I'd hit a coral rock with my forehead, nose and jaw. It cut my nose from the top down the left side. It opened it clear up and broke my nose and laid it over under my right eye. And, of course, they helped me back across the channel and we went just as fast as we could to the village and we got a buggy. (The natives called it a shaliotch and it was a translation from chariot.) They hooked one horse to it. A woman that was not a member was friendly and she drove the rest of that day and all that night to the headquarters. This village had the harbor where the ships came in and there was a doctor there. We woke him up and I could tell he'd been drinking quite badly but he pushed the nose back straight and just plastered it up with adhesive tape and told me to come back in a day or two.
In just a couple of days my face was swollen terribly and it was so bad that it pulled the stitches out that the doctor had put in the left side of my nose. He had to clip the stitches and pull them out but he didn't sew it up again. He took some little pinchers or tweezers and cleaned the little pieces of coral and bone that were embedded down in my nose out of the wound. Something he didn't do that first night. He worked on it quite a while. I went back to headquarters where I was staying and I went back to him once more and he said it was healing just fine. He didn't bandage it anymore but for a few weeks when I'd breath I'd breath right out of that wound.
It healed so fast that it grew proud flesh the size of a red pencil from the bridge clear down across my nose. The doctor took some blue stone or blue vitriol and he scratched it a little bit and gave me some to rub on my nose. He told me to go to a looking glass and scratch that stone and rub it on my nose every day until it ate all that proud flesh off. I asked him how long I should do that and he said until it's level and I never went back to him anymore. The wound healed up and I always had a scar there for the rest of my life. But I guess that it wasn't such a bad scar considering the accident that happened. I could have been killed if I had hit that coral just right. I probably would have never got out of there. But I happened to hit it more in the face than in the head.
Elder Huntsman loved to play tricks on people and a month or so later at about midnight he came to my village to my grass hut. My bed was close to the wall and he knew where I would be sleeping. My bed was made of 2 by 4's with holes drilled in and rope pulled across and native mats piled on top. I never saw a decent bed all the time I was there. Anyway, Elder Huntsman came up to the wall where I was sleeping and he banged against that dry grass hut and it sounded like the thing was caving in. I woke up wondering what that noise was and in a minute here it came again. I thought it was a horse that had gotten over by the wall and kicked or something like that. I hollered "Whoa" just as loud as I could in the middle of the night. Of course, he laughed and I knew it was the Conference President just playing a joke.
One time Elder Huntsman was visiting me and we were out tracting. We came to a place where an old man was sitting on the floor of his grass hut. Elder Huntsman wasn't very tall and his skin was fair and he was quite fleshy. This old man looked him over and said "Well if you had come fifty years ago you would have been good eating." There was a cannibal still living on the island when I was there. He was one of the last and he was called Cannibal Tom. In the past they didn't practice cannibalism to eat missionaries but when they went to war the victims that were slain or fell were eaten.
I taught school in that village nearly another year. Yes. I taught school nearly two years there. Then I was appointed Conference President. But before that happened there were six elders and four of them came down with typhoid fever. This is an experience I never will forget and it had quite a meaning. It taught me something that I would not have realized in any other way. They came down with typhoid fever so violently and just a few days of each other. How they could come down all together we never did know but we figured it was the water. As soon as they became ill the government found out about it because the doctor we went to reported it. The government was influenced by the other churches and priests wanting to drive the Mormons out of the islands and the government placed guards around us. There were two stationed there all the time carrying rifles. There would be a guard walking from one corner down the front and then the north side while another guard walked from the north corner down to the west corner and across the south side. We had a little building with two rooms in it for our headquarters where the elders would meet once a month to hold meetings. This was where the boats came in and there never were guards away from us for two months.
Those elders became so violently sick with such high fevers we had to tie them in bed because there were only two of us to nurse those four. We had to have a little rest so we had to change off tending them. We had two cots there and an English trader that lived not far off gave us two cots. We had to tear up sheets and what native cloth we could get and tie the elders down. They became so delirious they didn't know anything they were doing. They had strength enough to get up so we had to tie them down. We couldn't leave them alone a minute. We had to tend those elders just like you would tend little babies. The doctor came every few days and he told Elder Beatty and I what medicine to use. He told us that the odds were against them getting better, that there would be some of them buried on that lot. He said, "The government never will let you take them away. You will have to bury them right here." We got word to the Mission Headquarters in Samoa. There were about twenty missionaries at Samoa and a lot of Church members. The Mission President asked all those to fast and pray for the elders down in Tonga. And if ever two boys prayed it was Elder Beatty and me. We administered to them and we prayed. We pleaded with God to make them well that they might finish their missions and return to their families at home.
Finally they began to improve. We couldn't leave the compound to get supplies. The English trader would bring a few supplies and set them away from the building by a gate and then the guards would let us come that far and pick up the supplies. After about two months they started to get better quite fast. The doctor gave us strict orders that we couldn't let them have solid food and we bought a few chickens from the natives and boiled them and gave the elders a tablespoon at a time. We'd feed them quite often just one tablespoon of broth and everyone of them got better. The mission president came down from Samoa and he assured us it was the faith and prayers of Elder Beatty and I and the saints and elders in Samoa that got them over the typhoid. It was a miracle that so many could be so violently sick and with a high fever between 105 and 107 degrees and recover. Ordinary people, without the faith and prayers of so many, would be dying but not one of those elders died.
At that rime we knew there was a force of evil that was trying to stop our work. There had only been a few baptisms and we had felt Satan's power or the force of evil working against us but from that time on the missionary work began to progress. The Tongans all knew about the elders being ill and expected some of them to die. President Nelson came down and he went with me to the different branches to hold meetings where those elders had been laboring. He assured those people that it was the Spirit of the Lord and the Spirit of Healing that cured the elders.
From that point on I've always thought the force of evil withdrew. I think I heard Mevin J. Ballard say at one time that the forces of evil tried to overthrow the whole church when they were at Nauvoo and Satan drove the Saints west. Yes, Satan was in back of that and then when he couldn't overthrow the whole Church he tried to overthrow each branch in all nations. As the missionaries would go to the different countries and open up the work that's when they got the worst opposition. After I came home from my mission I heard Melvin J. Ballard say that from now on Satan works an each individual. (And I've noticed that this is true). He has given up the idea he can overthrow the Church but is working on the individual and especially the young people. I read in the Church News recently that right at the very village where those elders were so sick (Nukalofa) the Church has set apart three Patriarchs, one for each Stake that has been organized there.
The Tongan government was in back of the way we were treated when the elders were so sick. There was only one person in all those islands that even offered us a hand and that was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher. Everyone was afraid of the typhoid fever but he sent word that if we needed him he would come and help. But afterwards peoples attitudes began to change. The very place we were locked up and guards placed around us is where the government laid out the red carpel for President David O. McKay when he visited there.
The Tongan mission was started by schools. We couldn't get the people to listen to the gospel but the parents wanted their children to learn English so we started schools. The children would begin to learn English and the parents would begin to get faith in the elders and begin to listen to the gospel. The Church has built the Liahona College on that Island, organized three stakes, set apart three patriarchs, and now over fifty percent of the people along with their King has joined the Church. After I had been in the mission field half of my mission baptisms began to pick up. I remember one time when I had one of the other elders come and help me and we went down to the seashore and had services and baptized fourteen people. (Some adults and some younger people).
World War I broke out in Europe in 1914. For six months we elders on that island never knew what happened. Boats didn't come to the island and we did not receive letters or news. For a short period of time it was rumored that the United States was at war with Japan because both nations ships had been sighted out in the ocean. I had left home with just what they figured I would need in the way of clothing. But it was hard to keep clothing down there because of the wet climate. Every so often we had to hang it on lines to dry out so it wouldn't mildew. Before we left home we were instructed we wouldn't need to take very much because articles could be sent parcel post from the U.S. I wore my garments completely out and there wasn't a way to get them during that period of war. So I borrowed a small sewing machine that you turned with a crank and used my old garments as a pattern and I made two pair of garments out of factory.
When the mail came, of course it was piled up, we found out war was raging in Europe. Germany, France, and England were fighting face to face. The mail was suppose to bring us money but there wasn't any money in it. And for another six months I never received any money. I had to completely live with the natives. Of course we didn't need much money down there but we didn't have any to buy anything with. Part of those islands belonged to England, part to Germany, and part to France. We found out later that the ship with the mail had come to port at a German island and the English had taken all those Germans prisoners of war. The British sailors went to the Big Rock Post Office where the mail was piled up and they went through the mail and took all the money out. So when we finally received out mail there was no money. It was a long time after that before I received money from home.
In the latter part of 1915 our Conference President, Elder Lancaster, was released and sent home. I was set apart to take his place as Conference President. From that time on I spent most of my time going from one village to another visiting the schools that were established and visiting the elders teaching in those schools and laboring in those different villages. The island was about thirty miles long. I would walk from one school to another and stay a day, teach some classes in music, hold some meetings in the evening and stay all night with the elder there, then go on to another location the next day. The children were very musical. They could sing any part. Just give them a little help and they could sing any kind of music. Even when we were traveling in a boat there would be five or six men rowing, three on each side, and the leader would sing out a phrase and the others would sing out or repeat each phrase set to music. They would do this for hours rowing to their music.
I was released from my mission the last of April, 1916. My release read as follows:
Samoan Mission, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Box 29
Apia, Samoa
April 20, 1916.
Elder N.L. Smith
Dear Brother,
As president of the Samoan Mission it gives me pleasure to give you an honorable release to return home to your loved ones and friends after spending three years, three months and twenty-five days as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in the Samoan Mission, laboring among the Tongan people. Now dear brother if you would be happy at home as you have been here in a far off land you must work there as you have here, and may the Lord bless you to this end, and that you may always be humble and prayerful is the prayer of your friend and brother in the cause of truth.
Ernest Wright,
Mission President.
As I was leaving the island, not knowing if I would get home or not because of the war, boats were not running on schedule and there was some danger of torpedoes in the Pacific Ocean. But I will always remember the farewell the different school children gave me and the many curios and presents they gave me. I had so many I had to pay extra freight to get them carried on the steamship and I gave some to the other elders. There were school children from several schools that came to the wharf to bid me goodbye. I stood on the deck of the steamer and they stood on the wharf singing. The song they sang was "Oh, Dear Friend, We Never Will Forget You." I don't know where they got the music, but some of them had composed the words. There was a chorus and two or three verses.
I remember when sailing home there was a passenger on the deck of the steamer that was swept off by large waves. The steamer halted and stayed there some time trying to locate him but he never was found.
I arrived in San Francisco in the summer of 1916 just as the World Fair was ending. I had never seen an airplane but one flew at the closing of the fair and wrote in very large high letters "Goodnight". I stayed one night in San Francisco before going by train to Salt Lake.
| Updated: 10/25/98 |