American Embassy - Bucharest APO AE 09213 May 21, 1994 Matthew K. Heiss Acquisitions Director 50 East South Temple Salt Lake City, UT Dear Brother Heiss: Thank you for sending the xerox of my paper regarding the organization of the Church in Spain. Just a note: I notice that the name of my First Counselor in the first indigenous Madrid Branch Presidency is garbled. Could you pen in a correction to your original copy. His name was Wallace Baker not "Wassace" Baker. And it was Elder Hunter who phoned me upon my return to Salt Lake City on Home Leave to ask my advice about the best way to start missionary work (as noted, I recommended sending Latin Americans to take advantage of Spain's desire not to harass their Latin American cousins in order to promote Hispanidad. This seemed to get the work off the ground with minimal trouble). The Brother Billy Fotheringham mentioned in the Barnes history arrived in Madrid the day I left. He was staying in a hotel directly across the street from the one my family and I were staying in prior to our departure, and we got together for one brief restaurant meal. Brother Fotheringham succeeded me as counselor in the District Presidency. You enclosed with your materials a note from Bob Eddington regarding a very personal event in the life of my other Counselor Jose Oliveira. I was surprised that Bob committed this matter to writing. I've always been taught that this type of personal matter was between the individual and his bishop or branch president. Certainly in this case, when we wrote to ask advice of President McKay about how to handle the affair, we were instructed to "put your arms around this fine young man and do your best to keep him close to the Church. The Lord will handle the matter in his own way." The child was a girl. Jose learned a profound lesson about spirits of deception and went on to become a Branch President, a Bishop, a Stake President, and a Patriarch. I do not think the story about his having been misled for a time by a spirit of deception belongs in the written history of the Church in Spain available to the public -- at least not with his name attached. For sure I feel uncomfortable that you would mail this story to any other inquirer. If you feel it must be preserved, please put it in a limited access file. Responding to your request for further materials on Church History, I've had second thoughts about some of the things that happened during my mission to Scotland twenty-five years ago and decided that at least some of them were indeed worthy of a place in Church History. I've therefore written up some of the events which transpired during my mission to supplement the materials I've already submitted regarding my experiences in Iceland, France, Spain, Morocco, China, and Romania. Sincerely, David Timmins Townhouses to Chapels, Branches to Stakes, Deacons to Bishops: The Church In Scotland -- 1949-51 D. B. Timmins Call as District President During my first year as a missionary in Great Britain, despite hard work and the inspiring leadership of President Selvoy Boyer the first post-war mission president, we baptized no more than twelve people in Scotland during the entire year. In June 1950, eleven months after arriving in the field, I was called to serve as Scottish District President succeeding Elder David Bean. President Stayner Richards our new Mission President encouraged me not only to increase our missionary effort, but asked me to keep my eye open for properties which might serve the purpose of Branch meeting places in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The First Church-owned Properties in Scotland As we rode the trams and busses around Glasgow to visit various members and the tracting areas of the several Elders serving in the city, my companion Elder Morris Graves and I eventually located a desirable place with a "For Sale" sign in the window on Claremont Terrace a stone's throw from Kelvin Grove Park, near the University of Glasgow, and handy to trolley and Underground, which we thought might serve our needs. After talking to the real estate agent, who gave us the keys to inspect the interior -- which confirmed our initial impression, I telephoned President Richards, who soon came to Scotland and approved purchase of the Claremont Terrace town house. At the recommendation of the Estate Agent, who feared the owner might either be unwilling to sell to a Church -- or induced to raise his asking price -- the building was acquired in the name of The Mutual Improvement Association -- a practice which I have since learned has become quite common in the Church. Indeed, the Church's property in Romania is today held in the name of the M.I.A. (As a small sidelight, my great grandfather Gilbert Lang was a gifted wrought iron craftsman with workshops in Glasgow and several surrounding towns. I was moved when I found his name on the fancy iron gates of Kelvin Grove Park close to our Claremont Terrace property). We called together a Task Force of Elders and spent a couple of weekends working to sweep out the cobwebs, mop the floors, and repaint the ballroom on the second floor, in order to hold our first activity in our new building -- a District Social. Because of its size, the lack of servants to keep it clean, and the cost of coal to heat such a large property, it had apparently not been used since the end of the War (WW II). The neighbors had become accustomed to silence and the music from our dance apparently disturbed them, so that at length someone rang our bell to ask that we tune down the record player. Next step was to install some sixty upholstered chairs which had been located by Elder Dee Willden, who'd been authorized by President Richards to stay over for a few weeks to look for appointments to the new chapels. Dee had purchased a used motorcycle and traveled all over Scotland and the North of England, at length locating some upholstered theater seats which were being replaced in a neovation project. As I recall, we paid about seventy-five cents per unit. We added three coal stoves down each side of the two front rooms we had joined to use as a chapel. This provided the most comfortable, accessible, and convenient layout we'd ever had for LDS meetings in Glasgow. We had ample space for all our members in the chapel and adequate classroom space for all our Sunday School, Relief Society, and Priesthood needs -- plus two small rooms for use as Branch and District President offices. The missionaries working in the neighborhood were quartered in the servants' rooms on the top floor. About this time Elder Eugene Hilton and his wife (and teenage daughter) arrived. Elder Hilton had been Superintendent of Schools and Stake President in Oakland. He also owned several rental units and had much experience maintaining them. He and his family moved into one of the empty bedrooms on the upper floors and he took over much of the remaining renovation work. Elder Hilton also taught the Gospel Doctrine class, bringing the wisdom of an experienced gospel scholar and Stake President to the task. I learned a great deal from President Hilton. It's a remarkable world we live in, and some years later following the death of his wife, Brother Hilton married my wife Lola's widowed Aunt Ruth -- so we ended up related by marriage. Shortly after acquisition of the Glasgow property, Branch members in Edinburgh located a quite similar four story townhouse on Hillside Crescent not far from Calton Hill in one of the nicest, close-in locations in Edinburgh. This property was also approved for purchase. A retired Bishop and his wife named Clark, from Grouse Creek, Idaho soon arrived, and took over renovation of the Edinburgh property. Before the end of my mission I found that I'd been instrumental in acquiring and modifying for worship the first two properties the Church had ever owned in Scotland. President McKay was so pleased at this news that he told my mother, who at the time worked in the Church Office Building, that he intended to visit Scotland to dedicate the new chapels himself. As matters developed, however, he became unwell and was unable to perform this duty. The chapel of the Edinburgh property was also fitted out with some of the upholstered movie theater seats. In Edinburgh, however, we installed gas heaters along the sides of the chapel, which proved much more convenient to light up to get the chapel heated for meetings than were the coal stoves we'd used in Glasgow. Local Branch Presidents While there had from time to time been local Branch Presidents (my own great, great grandfather had been first LDS Branch President in Airdrie, being succeeded, when he was killed in a mine accident, by his son my great grandfather William Stuart Brighton), for most of the early post-WW II period missionaries had served almost exclusively as Branch Presidents. I determined to search out capable brethren to fill these offices so that the missionaries could attend full time to their proselyting responsibilities. New Branches With Missionary Elders relieved of the responsibility of presiding over existing branches, the time was ripe to reopen proselyting work in Paisley, a town southwest of Glasgow which had been closed to missionary work for almost a hundred years because of an unfortunate incident involving two missionaries in the long-ago past. I also sent missionaries to Motherwell, half way between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and to the Hebrides, which had been without missionaries for almost a century. Calling of First District Counselors and Creation of District Council Unlike the Districts in England, which consisted for the most part of a major city and the towns surrounding it, the Scottish District comprised the entire nation of Scotland. Like my predecessors, I found it difficult to visit the northern branches of the District as well as to work regularly with the missionaries assigned to these cities. I therefore called two outstanding missionaries, Elder Clifford Cutler and Elder Darrell Smith as Counselors, assigning them to the northern half of the District -- Perth, Dundee, and Aberdeen, while my companion, District Clerk Kenneth Anderson (later Elder Marcel Tingey) and I attended to Paisley, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Airdrie, and Edinburgh. I also called local sisters to head the District Relief Society, Primary, and Young Women's Organizations, and a local brother to head up the Young Men and began the practice of holding regular District Council Meetings in addition to our monthly missionary meetings. Sister Missionaries When I had entered the mission field it was the prevailing attitude that Sister Missionaries were of little use since they could not baptize and frequently required the presence of Elder missionaries to present some of the more complicated discussions. As a result, Scotland had never had more than one or two Sister missionary couples prior to my presidency. I had observed however that the Sisters were able to organize neighborhood Primaries (often several, held in different neighborhoods during the week), frequently interesting the parents of the youngsters attending these weekday meetings to come to church with their children on Sundays. So I approached President Richards to request other Sister Missionary couples and we soon had eight outstanding Sisters working in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We found as a result of these several new programs that both member activities and missionary work responded strongly. Prayer Meeting on Arthur's Seat Early in my Presidency (August, September 1950?), we called an early morning Missionary Meeting atop Arthur's Seat in Queen's Park Edinburgh (the place where Orson Pratt had dedicated the land of Scotland for the preaching of the Gospel, and thus called "Pratt's Hill" by Latter-day Saints). We were all in place by 7:00 a.m. -- long before weekend hikers began arriving -- and held a prayer and testimony meeting. We rededicated ourselves to the work and asked the Lord for perhaps seventy-five converts for the year (we amazed ourselves with our courage in asking for such a significant number). Before I left Scotland in July 1951 we'd baptized over 120 individuals. I understand that it subsequently became the practice for other District Presidents to hold similar missionary gatherings on Pratt's Hill. I only hope it inspired them as it did our group. Here I must mention that my first companion, Elder Joel Dunn and I were the first LDS missionaries to open work in Drumchapel, about five miles west of Glasgow on the Clyde River not far from the great shipbuilding facility at Clydeside. As matters developed, work was more than moderately successful in this new bedroom suburb, and my future brother-in-law Ross McDonald's father Steve McDonald was in charge of constructing a new purpose-built LDS church in Drumchapel some years later. Branches Become Stakes: Deacons Become Bishops and Stake Presidents Thirty three years later, visiting Scotland with Joel and his wife Jackie and my wife Lola, we visited the Drumchapel meeting house, as well as purpose-built chapels in Airdrie, Edinburgh, and Elgin. At that time, the Stake President told us that the Claremont Terrace and Hillside Crescent facilities, which had been purchased shortly following the war when servants were unavailable to care for such large old mansions and coal to heat them was in short supply -- and which we'd therefore bought at rock bottom prices -- had been sold for more than enough to completely finance the cost of constructing the lovely new purpose-built chapels which eventually took their places. We also found that each of the small branches we'd been involved with during our mission were now Stakes of Zion and several of the deacons we'd taught in one or another of these branches were now bishops or stake presidents. So Joel and I left Scotland, which we never considered we'd be fortunate enough to visit again in our lifetime, feeling we'd been wise stewards. Companion is Called as Mission President and Organizes Sesquicentennial of Church in Scotland Imagine our surprise when within a couple of years, Joel was called as Mission President to Scotland and Lola and I visited him three times from Paris during his administration: once for Thanksgiving, when he and Jackie gathered all the American members living in Scotland in the elegant missionl home for turkey dinner; once at Christmas; and once following their mission to tour Scotland, England, and Cornwall with the Dunns and my sister Margaret and her husband Bob Bailey who had served the last part of their third mission with the Dunns in Scotland. Indeed, we attended the celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the establishment of the Church in Scotland at a ceremony in Queen's Park where a bench was dedicated in the name of Orson Pratt at the foot of Pratt's Hill, afterwards assisting at a special presentation by a chorus trained by Bob in Usher Hall where they sang an anthem he'd composed especially for this occasion.