In one of our early planning meetings, somebody said what a shame it was that there was no church history in the Pacific Northwest to share with the choir on tour. My ears prickled at this comment because as a Seattle native, born and raised, virtually ALL of my church history took place here. I thought of my parents, who arrived in 1958 when there was only one stake in Seattle, and watched the church's presence grow to include a full-sized temple serving a district of 34 stakes.
Then I remembered my dad. A Boeing engineer, an inveterate tinkerer, and a devoted disciple of Christ, he made a series of models to help him tell the stories of the Book of Mormon. Over the years -- a fifty-year span beginning in 1962 -- he traveled throughout the region, sharing these models by invitation in Sunday night firesides.
Wednesday morning, in my home stake center, my mom and I got out these models and shared them with the choir.
Two of them are pictured here: the Nephite ship and the Liahona.
Nephi said that his ship was not built after the manner of men, so we can only speculate about how it was made. In addition to the detail shown above, my dad added several personal touches to his model, including Nephi's broken bow hung on the mast, a Liahona in Lehi's hand, the plates of Laban sitting on a table, and a scowl on Laman's face.
The gold plates, as described by Joseph Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, and Oliver Cowdery, stood about 6" by 6" by 8", bound by three rings, with a half to two-thirds of them sealed. They were hand-engraved in Reformed Egyptian, a pictoral, glyphic language.
The only Reformed Egyptian we know comes from the Anthon transcript, which my dad copied over and over on these leaves. He liked to joke about the poor archaeologist, a thousand years hence, who will find these plates buried in the backyard and say, "No wonder this civilization killed itself off! It just kept repeating itself!"
The most curious feature of the Jaredite barge was that it had holes in both the top and the bottom of the vessel, yet it didn't sink. My dad's engineering mind solved this problem by creating a shaft in the middle of the boat with a door in it. The door could be opened for ventilation or closed for storms.
My dad was not a credentialed scholar or speaker. He was simply a gifted tinkerer with an outsized love for the Book of Mormon and a desire to share it. Over the years, he reached untold thousands with his models and stories, inspiring them either to read the Book of Mormon for the first time or to rededicate themselves to it.
As a choir, we share this in common with my dad: We also love the Book of Mormon, and we are using our talents to share it. We closed the hour pondering these two questions:
Do you love the Book of Mormon?
How (else) can you use your talents to share it?
Above: My lovely mother, Kay Hancock, holds in her hands a rare first edition of the Book of Mormon, one of only 5000 to have been printed.
Photo credits: Heidi Rodeback, Laurie Patterson
Photo credits: Heidi Rodeback, Laurie Patterson
