The life of Ann
Rowley, a pioneer woman in the early days of
the Church, demonstrates how exercising faith
impacts our lives for good. A widow from England,
Sister Rowley exercised her faith to
answer the prophet's call to gather to Zion. She was a member of the
Willie handcart company, which encountered deep
snowdrifts along the trail in the fall of 1856. They had reached a
point in the trek where her seven children
were literally starving. She wrote: "It hurt me to
see my children go hungry. Night was coming and there was
no food for the evening meal. I asked God's help
as I always did. I got on my knees,
remembering two hard sea biscuits that had been left
over from the sea voyage. They were not large, and were
so hard they couldn't be broken. Surely, that was not
enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and
2 fishes were not enough to feed 5,000 people
either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it. So, with God's help,
nothing is impossible. I found the biscuits and
put them in a dutch oven and covered them with water
and asked for God's blessing. Then I put the lid on the
pan and set it on the coals. When I took off the
lid a little later, I found the pan
filled with food. I kneeled with my family and
thanked God for his goodness. That night my family
had sufficient food."