(1943) Peoria, IL
They disbanded the quartets, because it didn’t look good to have so many young men not in the service, and entertaining. So I was sent to Peoria Illinois and my companion there was Raymond Owen and we had a very successful time. We baptized a few, not that we had converted, but harvested somebody else’s. And we held church there in a rented hall and our apartment was right next to the Catholic Church and we got well acquainted with Father Han a local priest. He was a young man about our age and we used to play basketball with him, at a basketball court there at the church. We didn’t convert him, but he didn’t convert us either.
While I was at Peoria, I was being transferred to Des Moines, Iowa. Right at the last minute they changed my calling to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to be District President; this gave me responsibility for the whole State of Wisconsin. So my new companion had already come in and I didn’t have any place to stay. So I went down town and ran across Ronald Brown who I had gone to college with in Pocatello. He was back there as an engineer for Caterpillar. He wasn’t a member of the church, but he said “Well gosh I have an extra bed you can come and stay with me tonight”. So I went over and we went to a young people’s party that night. There were about 20 young people a lot of young ladies and a few young men. And we rode horses, which I didn’t exactly like, because I had gotten off of my horse when I was fifteen and decided that I would never get on again. But anyway I did what ever the others did. Then afterwards we built a fire and sat around and talked. And they wanted to know about the church so I did get to tell a bunch of them about the church, and it was funny because all the girls in the front row lit up cigarettes and they were really having a puff, when I got on to the “Word of Wisdom”. I said, “There is nothing that takes the beauty from a young woman’s face, like a cigarette”. And you should have seen the cigarettes disappear. Any way, we had a good time and I went back and spent the night with Ronald Brown and his other roommate.
(1943) Eau Claire, WI
The next morning I caught the bus and went to Eau Claire Wisconsin. I can’t remember my first companion’s name at this time. But then I got Daniel Balstead who was recently from Germany, but he did speak English very well. He was an older missionary. Then I got Ambrose Chabot. He had terrible nightmares and other elders were afraid to work with him, because he would get up in the night and cause a bit of trouble. So I said, “Send him up”. He was a Catholic convert from Seattle Washington. I worked with him and Brother Balstead and we did country work and I of course was busy. I had to go audit all the branches in Wisconsin, which took me away quite a bit. They were the only set of Elders I had, all the rest were lady missionaries. I think I had 6 sets of lady missionaries and some of those were local missionaries that had been recruited to work with the regular missionaries. But any way, they were doing a good job. We also had Homer Adams from Salt Lake. His father had the Spring Canyon Coal Company and he had a car. So we did our country work, as we called it, in his car. We traveled the whole state, including upper Michigan and visited with many members. We had a lot of funny experiences. We spent an evening in Green Bay in which they had a truck garden there. The family name was Hoffman and they now are very wealthy people. But they served us all kinds of green vegetables. Then we went on up to Sturgeon Bay where we were supposed to spend the evening. Brother Peterson at Sturgeon Bay made sub chasers for the government. The next morning early he woke us up and said, “My crew isn’t here and I need someone to help shake down this new sub chaser”. So we went down to the lake and went out across it. He had me steer, Elder Adams had to watch the rudder and Elder Chabot had to keep things intact on the deck while he took all the notes of everything. So we went out fine and it was just a wonderful experience. But on the way back, we went clear out till we couldn’t see land and then we headed back to port and Brother Peterson said, “Well why don’t you watch the rudder and we’ll let Elder Adams steer”. So we changed places, but there’s a difference when you are looking back, I got seasick, I lost all those green vegetable that I’d eaten the night before plus the breakfast we’d had before we went out. We came back and had a wonderful time with the Petersons. Brother Peterson had filled a mission in England and he and his wife were married in the temple but their children were not active.
Then we went on up to Ironwood Michigan, which is on the Michigan Peninsula above Wisconsin. Then over to Iron City then back down through. We stopped at Wausau Wisconsin with a family by the name of McNeal. We had a funny experience there. They said they attended the Methodist church, he was a High Priest and they were married in the temple and they had a wonderful family, active, but they were active in the Methodist church. I said, does it bother you, and he said,”Oh no, I teach the men and my wife teaches the women. I use the priesthood manual and she uses the Relief Society manual to teach”. So they were doing some missionary work without meaning to probably. We went on over to the other side of Wisconsin and then we came on down. We covered the whole state.
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