Sophia Bundy Packard and her husband, Noah, were introduced
to the church by their neighbors, the Jolly family. They had originally pitied
the Jolly family for their belief in the “gold bible,” and decided to visit
them to be friendly (and set them straight about the error in their ways). Mrs.
Jolly rose to the occasion, taking the scriptures Noah quoted to her and
showing how they fit into the Mormon understanding of the scriptures. He could
not refute her arguments.
When Mrs. Jolly later offered Noah a Book of Mormon, Sophia
and her husband read it out loud together. On their second reading, the couple
received a powerful spiritual confirmation of its truth, and they were
baptized. They moved first to Kirtland, with many stretches where Sophia was
left to manage as best as she could while her husband served several missions,
and the family was often impoverished. After a few short stops in other places,
the family settled down in Nauvoo in 1840.
Sophia was present at the first Relief Society meeting, and
after Elizabeth Ann Whitney motioned that Emma Smith be named President of the
Relief Society, Sophia seconded the motion.
When the Relief Society organized four “necessity committees,”
designed to “search out the poor and suffering – To call on the rich for aid
and thus as far as possible relieve the wants of all,” Sophia was named to one
of these committees. These committees would eventually transform into our
current visiting teaching program. At a later meeting, Eliza R. Snow records Sophia
stating that “she desird [sic] to do her duty and magnify her calling
faithfully,” and Sophia did this, bringing attention to the needs of sisters on
several occasions captured in the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, and
donating resources to help the poor.
She travelled to Utah in 1850 in the Warren Foote company,
and settled the next year in Springville, Utah. She died in 1858, as her
husband puts it, “her life in all probability shortened by over-exertion in
taking care of the sick in the move that took place that season from the north
to the south.”
I’m thankful for her example of dedicated service, and for
the visiting program she pioneered – it has blessed my life immensely.
Sources:
The First Fifty Years
of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-Day Saint Women’s History, eds.
Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow.
Warren
Foote Company (1850), Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database, 1847-1868.
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