My name is Jake Nichol. I serve on the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation board and I also chair the Audit and Finance Committee for the board. I think there's probably no person that had more first person witness to so many of the important revelations of the Church than Wilford Woodruff did. If you think back about his associations with Joseph Smith and with Brigham Young and then eventually his role as a prophet, he was there at every one of the significant events and was able to eventually tell us via his diary, you know, what his impression of these significant events were.

It's obvious to me, as I have learned more about Wilford Woodruff, that he was an incredibly faith-based giant. And that as much as any man or woman I've ever studied in my life, so much of the challenges he faced and the opportunities that he was involved in had to do with this basis of faith.

And so if you think about the current rising generation, my theory is so much of faith has been replaced by instant information where, you know, where our children can go search for any answer. And if, if you think you can find an answer someplace, maybe you don't need faith so much. Well, I think Wilford Woodruff teaches us that faith is such an essential part of finding truth.

I was introduced to the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project by Jordan Clements, who is our current board chair. We were on the golf course together and he asked me the question, “Do you have interest in Church history?” Of course, when he asked that question to anyone that's a member of the church, they say, “yes,” as I did.

So from that introduction I began to learn about the fundamental purpose of the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation and became inspired by this idea that we might be able to inspire the rising generation to become more faith based in the way they live their lives. Because Wilford Woodruff was such an incredible faith giant, the idea that we might be able to use his experience, his first person accounts, to help our rising generation understand the role that faith plays in their lives.

Well, by taking the writings of a man who had 60 plus years of daily diary, I am highly confident that we're going to be able to find connections and put things in context that corroborate or explain or add color to revelations, to debates, to disagreements that are chronicled throughout the Church.

But we don't have anyone that has done the amount of work or the daily task of recording his or her feelings as we do with Wilford Woodruff. That's where I think the amazing power of this will be, where we'll be able to use his diligence at recording his feelings to corroborate or explain or put context to many of our questions.