We're standing on the Malvern Hills. This particular spot is called the Herefordshire beacon. And just behind me, you can see the entrenchments of an Iron Age fort. It's a huge complex. And this was all constructed between 700 to 200 BC. So there's been fortifications here for centuries and centuries. The reason I mentioned that is because in 1840 Wilford Woodruff came up here and first of all, on May the ninth, he stood on a hill, opposite us on called the Malvern hill.

He looked down and surprisingly he's up here during a lightning storm, but he's high enough that he's looking down on the clouds and seeing the lightning in the valleys beneath him. Well two days later he climbs this top Herefordshire beacon. This is the highest of all the Malvern Hills. And then he starts to look at this, you know, here's the ravages of time before him, where people have died. And I just want to read from his journal of his feelings as he stood here, looking at everything around him.

He says, "I soon drew my thoughts from the busy rabbit, sheep and asses to the solemn reflections, which the ravages of time presented before me. Oh, Malvern, thy lofty hill bears up my feet. While mine eyes take a survey of the deep entrenchments thy mighty bulwarks, which have trembled by the roar of cannon the clash of arms and the din of law has reached around the eyebrow and died away in the veil beneath. While the blood of many of a Roman and Englishman too have washed thy brow and soaked thy soul while they have fallen to rise no more."

I can just imagine him here all by himself, just looking at man and the world, and what he's looking out here, cause you get this wonderful 360 degree look all around you, is United Brethren country. You know, in miles in either direction are these little communities that suddenly accept him and accept the restored gospel message.

Well, he loved it so much that nine days later he brings up Brigham Young and Willard Richards. And the three of them gather here on this very beacon, they mention it by name and they decide to have this little council. They had decided in Preston that they were going to print an English Book of Mormon and an English hymnal and start the Millennial Star.

They didn't know how they were going to fund that. But from these United brethren, the Benbows, who live in Castle Frome, which you can see down in this direction, gave him 250 pound, and the Kingtons, who live over here in Dymock, gave him a hundred pound. That's a huge amount of money. With this money now, they stood up here and they decided that Brigham Young should immediately go with that money, head back north and start those publications, so that the people could have the Book of Mormon and their own hymnbook in their hands to worship God.

Text: “From 1839 to 1841, nine members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles labored in Britain and brought 4,000 converts into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”