"For Such a Time as This" (Esther 4:14)

She was ten years old when she was captured by enemies and carried away into captivity. There she was raised as a servant, learning the language and skills of her new people. At the age of sixteen she was sold to a white trader who made her his wife. 

  It was at that time, when she expecting her first child that she met two white men whose lives would change the course of the new American national’s destiny. It was the winter of 1804-1805 and these American explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were wintering on the Missouri River near the villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians where they had built Ft. Mandan. Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian girl who had been captured as a ten-year-old girl and who was now the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trader living with the Hidatsa Indians met the two explorers who were exploring the new American continent.

On February 11, 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a son, Jean Baptiste; when the explorers left in April for the West, she, Charbonneau (and the baby) went along as guides to the unknown territory. 

All summer the group followed the Missouri River west across what is now Montana. When they reached Three Forks, near the mouth of the Missouri, Sacagawea recognized she was in Shoshone area where she had been kidnapped years earlier. When they reached the end of the river and knew they needed horses to continue, they approached a tribe to purchase horses; it was the tribe Sacagawea had been kidnapped from years earlier, and the chief was her brother. 

Not only were they able to trade goods for horses, they were given a guide who knew the way through the Bitterroot Mountains to the Clearwater River which emptied into the Snake and Columbia River and eventually drained into the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark and their company were able to map and open the whole area for western expansion of the United States.

Sacagawea played a central role in helping Lewis and Clark blaze a trail across the western part of the American continent and made the “Louisiana Purchase” an integral part of America. Without her help, it may have taken the expedition much longer, or they may not have been successful. Sacagawea was truly prepared for her

“mission” in life—leading these explorers across the unknown territory. Sacagawea’s kidnapping, her knowledge of life as a Shoshone and a Hidatsa and her relationship to the chief of the Shoshone was priceless. Sacagawea was carefully prepared for her important mission in life, and she fulfilled it.

Another valiant woman who was prepared for a special role in her life—to save her people, the Jews—was Esther in the Old Testament. Esther was a righteous young Jewish woman who along with the other Jews were in captivity, but King Ahasuerus of Persia and Media had chosen her as his queen.  A wicked man named Hamman was jealous of the Jews and wanted to destroy them, so he made a law that on a certain day, all Jews throughout the 20 providences of the king would be killed.  When Esther heard about this decree, she asked her uncle and all the Jews to fast and pray for three days that she could influence the king to cancel the degree. 

 

Her uncle Mordecai told Esther “who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”(Esther 4:14)

Of course Esther saved the day, even at the risk of her own life—she went into her husband in his chamber without being asked (which was punishable by death), but he spared her life, and granted her request to cancel the wicked decree to kill all the Jews, and killed Hamman instead. Esther had been preparing all her life for this mission--to save her people, the Jews, from death.

I know each of us came to earth with a mission, great or small, to fulfill. I’ve often contemplated what my mission in life is. I know my mission is not a great important mission like Sacagawea or Esther, but it is important for me to understand my mission, prepare for it, and then do it. 

I think one of my most important missions in my life has been to be a mother. This is not easy in this day and age when motherhood, especially a stay-at-home mother, is denigrated, devalued, and careers are seen as so much more significant in a woman’s life. 

Although I stayed at home with my children for 25 years, I also worked for most of the years of my youngest child’s school years, while my husband who had retired from the military became the “primary caretaker.” 

During those years I often prayed and struggled to understand what is the best thing to do--best for my family, my child, me? 

Life isn’t black and white; our mission in life isn’t clear-cut or crystal clear as Sacagawea or Esther’s was. Is it to be a good neighbor? Involved in community service? Involved in government service? How much time do I devote to volunteer work? 

 I read about women who have organized service projects to help hundreds of people in Africa, and I wonder if that is what I should do. I see women who write books and hold down full time jobs and still have six children and are wonderful mothers. I see women whose musical voices touch hundreds or millions of people, but I know that is not my talent or my mission.

All I can do is to live each day the best I can; to pray for guidance to know what I should do TODAY. Then I can listen for inspiration and look around every day to see what I CAN do. It won’t be earth-shaking, world-notable things that history will record that I have done in my life, but the words of my favorite poet has been my touchstone all of my life. 

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, or ease one heart the pain, or put one robin into his nest again, I will not have lived in vain.” Emily Dickenson.

Everyone Has a Role In Family History

My Grandmother Hansen infected me with “genealogy fever” when I was 12-years-old and was visiting her home in Monroe, Utah for a week. She showed me all the genealogy she had worked on, and showed me how to make my own large genealogy chart, telling me their stories as we worked. She gave me copies of their histories, on mimeographed paper.

When I went home, I kept my histories and my large genealogy chart and my life-long love affair with family history had begun. When my grandmother’s health began to fail, she moved in with my Aunt only a few blocks from our house. I now had two “collaborators” to assist me with my genealogy. I went with them to family reunions where I got more information, met more relatives and learned more about genealogy and family history. My Grandmother Hansen died when I was 15-years-old, but I never recovered from “genealogy fever.”

When we finally retired to Centerville in 1990, I worked full time for 19 years so I didn’t have much time to do anything about my family histories. However I kept collecting information. My cousin and I went to Monroe, Utah to get some histories from my great-aunt Agnes, where I was able to take a photo of a picture one of my ancestors had painted. My cousin and I shared what information we had and I kept going to my Grandmother Hansen’s Millers’ family reunion.

After I finally retired from work, I joined the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (DUP), and I decided to write the biographies of some of my ancestors. I was grateful for all the histories I had collected throughout the years—even the mimeographed pages that were now so old that they were hard to read. I checked with DUP to see which of my ancestors did not have biographies in the DUP archives. I found one—my great- grandfather, Peter Hansen. I combined the information I had collected, being careful to cite where I got the information (I had obtained five biographies, including a short autobiography he’d written). 

Then I went to http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/. You can put in an ancestor’s first and last name, birth and death year and it will pull up which ship and wagon train they came across in if they came between 1847 and 1868. I discovered Peter Hansen, his sister, mother, and stepfather had come to Utah in one of the first groups of Scandinavians 1853. It also had journal accounts of others in the same wagon train so you could read what happened along the way. I was touched when I read the death of Peter Hansen’s stepfather in the journal of another pioneer: “Sunday, July 24. A quarter of a mile’s travel brought us to plenty of water. This morning Hans Andersen Pill passed away.”

 This same ancestor served in the Utah Blackhawk War so I was able to go to the Utah State Archives and get copies of his service in that war—when he enlisted, when he left and where he served. I discovered the letters he wrote in the 1900s trying to get a pension for his service in that war; however he couldn’t prove he was the same person who enlisted as Peter Allen (he was using his second stepfather’s last name) but was released as Peter Hansen (his real name). Even though he received a medal for serving in the war, he couldn’t get the Federal Government to acknowledge he’d served in the war. 

I was touched in researching another ancestor, my Grandmother Hansen’s mother’s father Henry Bucholdt Christensen. Grandmother’s mother had died bearing her 10^th child and her father had married two other times. He had three children with his third wife, but none of Grandmother’s family knew much of his second family and almost nothing about Grandfather Christensen. However my great-aunt Agnes wrote, “I’ve never heard very much about my great-grandfather. .  and wanted to know more about this grandfather . . . [I] called grandfather’s daughter Katherine . . .  and will now proceed to write his history as I understand it.”  It was this history, by Agnes, that was the most complete history of him that I found. I know without it, we wouldn’t have known nearly as much about him.

My saving all those biographies throughout the years--including those old mimeographed ones I got from my grandmother—were the basis for my biographies. I couldn’t have written the biographies without them. 

I turned in my history of Niels Peter Hansen to the DUP last year. I was touched recently when I saw it on Family Search submitted by someone I didn’t know. I was ashamed to think I hadn’t even thought to put it on Family Search. So I put my recently completed Henry Bocholtz Christensen’s biography on Family Search so others could learn about him.

There are many ways you can help in Family History: You can collect biographies and information (like I did for over 60 years); you can actually interview and write the histories (like my great-aunt Agnes), you can share histories; you can help others learn how to research and write histories; you can collaborate with others, whether it is family, DUP and or at reunions. You can encourage children, youth and the younger generation as my grandmother did. Everyone can share what they have in Family Search. Everyone has a role in family history.