Ardis on the Handcart Rescue Lesson

Posted on September 28, 2009
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Ardis has up two posts on this week’s Sunday School lesson about the Martin and Willie handcart companies. The first is a discussion of the controversy. The second is Ardis talking about how she taught the lesson. The lesson went reasonably well in our ward, if a tad sentimental at times. Although the error Ardis mentioned about the rescuers was propagated. Those interested might like the KUER podcast from last year. (There’s some back and forth between Ardis and Bagley in the comments)

I think many of us had relatives in that disastrous handcart journey so it’s an interesting story. Bagley has a recent paper that was rather harsh in particular of Brigham Young’s role in letting the handcart company go. Of course in Church there’s a tendency to downplay or never mention the stupid decisions and play up divine providence. Ardis’ posts do a nice job threading the needle between these two extremes.