Put the mirrors away and learn hard work and perseverance.
Those are lessons people today can learn from the pioneers who trekked to Utah 150 years ago, Lloyd D. Newell told residents of this historic town Sunday during a kickoff fireside for this week's Fiesta Days celebration with the theme of "Spirit of Pioneering."Newell, host of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's weekly broadcast "Music and the Spoken Word," was the featured speaker for the Fireside Chat, a community event held at the LDS Spanish Fork Stake Center.
Drawing from personal family histories, Newell told how his great-great-grandmother, Susanna Stone, a member of the ill-fated Willy Handcart Co., traded her mirror to the Indians for buffalo meat to survive. She didn't see her 26-year-old weathered and tanned face in a mirror until arriving in the Salt Lake Valley months later, he said.
Newell said her journal reflects how the handcart pioneers suffered from the weather but never complained because of the testimonies of their faith. She wrote how hard it was to endure, "but the Lord blessed us."
"What can we learn from the pioneers?" Newell asked. "Put the mirrors away."
Mirrors represent the growing self-interest in people today. Rather, the pioneers set the example of selfless service. "We don't do it for pay," he said, citing examples of modern voluntarism and service.
The trek to Utah "burned out the dross" in those settlers, leaving the gold of their souls, he said, quoting J. Rueben Clark Jr., an LDS general authority who spoke about those events 50 years ago at the pioneers' centennial celebration.
They learned through persecution and hardship and their character was forged by adversity. People often find God at their lowest point, when pleading for help, he said.
"The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a price (we were) glad to pay," Newell said his ancestor wrote in her journal.
The lives of people today are no less challenging and exact "a price we must pay to become acquainted with God," he advised. Included is the challenge of living a righteous life in a wicked world, he said. "We may not be hungry, but we may be starving spiritually."
He advised the audience to "create a pocket of excellence wherever you are."
Reach out to others, build up, don't tear down. Be a light and a model, not a critic. Offer a kind word. Such behavior will have a transforming effect here and throughout the world, he said.