I was born in Hutchinson,
McLeod County, Minnesota, on November 17, 1917. By husband and I with our
family moved to Utah in 1949, living in a trailer house, doing construction
work until July 1955. In 1951 we lived in Hinckley, in the City Park, Utah, in
our trailer. At that time I was afflicted with a very severe headache which I
had had for seven years prior to 1951. I had gone to doctors and they couldn’t
find anything wrong with me, but still I had the headaches. The doctors had
informed me that it was not migraine headaches.
Mrs. Lillian Taylor of
Hinckley asked me if I believed in prayer, and if I would consider going to be
administered to by the Patriarch Chas. R. Woodbury. I told her I sincerely
believed in prayer and in divine healings and miracles, and I believed that God
could heal. We went to the Patriarch’s home. I told him that I was not a member
of the Latter-day Saints Church and did not intend to become a member. The
Patriarch left the room for the purpose of praying, he afterwards told me, and
also to get consecrated oil. He stayed a long time during which time I was
suffering severely with the headache and felt like returning home and going to
bed. The headaches were so severe I lost all courage and did not care whether I
lived or not.
He finally came into the
room and took a seat behind the chair where I was sitting and he still waited a
long time before he administered to me. He finally administered to me according
to the practice of the L.D.S. Church. I was in severe pain during the
administration and was not much interested in what he said until he began to
speak of cancer. Then there was a certain confirmation in my mind that this was
the cause of my trouble. He told me I would be healed and would not have any
more headaches. The headaches left me immediately and from that day to this I
have not been afflicted with them. He told me that the cancer would leave me
thru the blood stream, and I would never be afflicted with it again. Later the
cancer did leave me while living in our trailer home, and I saw it. There were
four or five pieces of the cancer like the woody part of a tree, and it had
arms or tenticles sticking out from it like decayed wood.
He told me he had gone in
his room to pray for God to reveal to him the cause of my illness since I did
not know the cause. He had waited until God revealed to him the cause of my
affliction. God did reveal to him what it was before he administered to me. He
told me I would become a member of the Church; that my husband and I would be
married in the temple.
I became a member of the
Church in 1955, but my husband has not as yet become a member but my two
children have become members. He made me many promises if I lived obedient to
the Gospel after joining the Church.
Another patriarch gave me my
patriarchal blessing in which he also said my husband and I would be sealed in
the temple. This latter blessing was given to me after I had become a member of
the Church in December, 1955.
You must recall that I was
very ill when the above took place, and if in any way there are errors, they
are mine and I do know many other great promises were bestowed upon my head at
that time. They were all as great as my healing, but all were with conditions.
I had studied to become a
minister in the Assembly of God Church. I went to school in Springville,
Missouri, in 1936-38. I did not graduate so did not become a minister but had
been a member of that church for 22 years.
When I was living in alt
Lake City in our trailer house which was located on 13th East and 21st
South Streets, I wish the children wanted to go to Liberty Park. I walked that
distance to the park and was very tired when we arrived there. We selected an
empty bench inside the park but close to the street. As I reached the bench
there sat an elderly man on one end of the bench. I sat on the gras at his feet
and the children began to play. The man began to talk to me. We conversed for
about two hours, and he told me I would become a member of the Latter-day Saint
Church. I did not know anything about the Church except that I thought that
polygamy was all there was to the Church. I told him I did not think it was
possible, He told me many things about myself.
After conversing for two
hours I decided to go home and started to go to the street and thence home.
Before arriving at the sidewalk, which was only about 40 feet away, I turned
around to wave goodbye to him, and to my astonishment he had gone and was nowhere
to be seen. He could not have got out of the park in any way because it was
only seconds from the time I arose from the grass to leave for home. It was
many years afterwards when I learned of the translated Nephites.
He was an elderly man and
was wearing modern fashioned clothes and hair cut. He was smooth shaven. His
face and hands were beautiful, like a young child’s, and he had rosy
complexion. He seemed to me to be about 65 years of age. He had on grey
clothes, white shirt and a straight black tie, not fancy but plain, simple and
tidy and neat. I asked him his name but I cannot now remember it. His hands
were lying gently on his lap. He told me his mission on earth was to go about
preaching the gospel in parks and on busses to people like me. This he said to
my question as to what was his business. All of these experiences were entirely
foreign to my former religious teaching and training in the Assembly of God
Church. (Evangeline Hansen Bickel, “A Wonderful Visitation and Healing,” in Faith
Like the Ancients’, ed. N. B. Lundwall, 2 vols. [Salt Lake City: Pioneer
Press, 1973], 2:263-66)
