Marie Madeleine Cardon Guild

I've been impressed that many of the isolated sisters I've been studying have been blessed with spiritual gifts that have guided them. Marie Cardon Giuld's conversion demonstrates this.


Marie was born in the rural Alps in 1834. When she was roughly five years old, she had a dream. She saw herself as a young woman, sitting in a meadow and reading a Sunday school book. Three men came to her, and they told her not to be afraid: they were servants of God, come from far away, to preach about the restoration of the gospel. They told her about Joseph Smith, and that the gospel he restored would never be taken from the earth. They told her she'd bring her parents into the gathering of Saints, and they would cross the ocean to go to Zion. 


She told her father about the dream, and 10 years later, her father heard about three missionaries in the area preaching the same ideas her daughter had told him about. He left immediately to find them, and when the elders came to her house, she was sitting in a meadow, reading her Sunday School book. They spoke the same words to her as she had heard in her dream. Marie and her parents were baptized. She assisted the missionaries in translating their sermons (her people, Waldensians, spoke their own dialect).


On one Sunday, she was interpreting a sermon during a Sunday service, when a mob came and demanded that she and the missionaries be sent out. She marched out, bible in hand. The minister that had confirmed her into his church when she younger accused her of disloyalty to her oaths; she replied that she was still loyal to truth, but she had more of it now. When everyone started shouting for the elders again, she held up her bible in her right hand and commanded them to depart – the Elders were under her protection. The ministers asked the mob to leave, and they did.


Just as her dream outlined, she immigrated to Utah in 1854. None of the Italian saints she traveled with spoke English. When they arrived in Liverpool, Marie studied so their party could be understood. Their party joined others from a variety of European locations. When they stopped in New Orleans, cholera was spread throughout the party, and Marie helped nurse the ill, including her father. She had an eventful crossing of the plains, including more outbreaks of cholera, running for her life from some men that tried to kidnap her, and several encounters with Native Americans. She married Charles Guild, and they had eleven children, eventually settling in Wyoming.


Sources:
Maki, Elizabeth. 'Suddenly the Thought Came to Me': Child's Vision Prepares her Family for the Gospel. 3 June 2013.
An Autobiography of Marie Madeline Cardon Guild, excerpts compiled by Susan Thomas Tippets 1995.