Two Offers

One morning I received a letter from Elder Ernest Joseph of Beaver inviting me to come down and visit with them. My Aunt persuaded me to accept so I did. I took the bus the next morning and arrived in Beaver eight hours later. Ernest met me and when I arrived at their home I met his wife, Ellen, and we liked each other immediately. We have been good friends ever since. Their baby girl was named Mary.

One evening they invited a guest for supper and when he arrived and I was introduced to him, I learned that his name was Orville Harris, the same friend I had written to a few years before and he was still a bachelor. I wasn't too impressed with him at first but he was very kind and the remaining time I was in Beaver he did his best to entertain me, taking me to a school play, the picture show, and driving me around the country side. At the school play the Harris relatives showed a great deal of curiosity about me. They wondered who this strange person was who had captured the interest of their bachelor cousin and nephew.

Orville Harris was very attentive. He took me to his home to visit his parents. He told me later that his father said to him, "Where in the world did you find that girl. You had better grab her before someone else does".

After ten interesting days I returned to Salt Lake.

In the meantime I received many letters from Orville Harris in Beaver. Then one day he asked me how I would like to be a farmer's wife. When I answered it I said it all depended upon who the farmer was (I wanted to tease him a little).

About this time I had a very tempting offer to become manager of the Coalville Ice Cream plant. They would send me to Logan for some special training for a few weeks. It was very exciting and I didn't know which offer to accept. I wanted to accept the second offer. I wasn't in love with Orville, but I did like him very much. Then I thought I had better talk it over with my Bishop. After many questions put to me by Bishop Snelgrove, I was asked if I had received a Patriarchal blessing. I had a few months earlier from Patriarch Hyrum G. Smith. In it he told me I would be sealed to a choice companion and receive my blessings in the house of the Lord. Bishop Snelgrove pointed out that if these blessings were important to me I had to help the Lord bring them about. He told me to go home and pray about it.

I did pray about it and gave it much thought. I would soon be 32 and if I was to be a mother in Israel, as my Patricarchal blessing also promised, I didn't have much time left. It wasn't an easy decision to make. All my friends and relatives lived in the northern part of the state. But when Orville came up to visit me in July, he overruled all my objections and erased all my fears so we decided to be married in October after conference.

It had been a year of varying emotional experiences, full of fears, disappointments, and yet I had had many joyous moments visiting my many wonderful friends. The Lord had been so good to me.

I was married in the Salt Lake Temple on October 9, 1930. Aunt Edith Neal and Ellen Wheat came to the Temple with me. After the Temple ceremony we went to dinner in a restaurant and we stayed in Salt Lake that night. We went to Beaver the following day. Orville's mother was very ill and he was very worried about her. His father had died during the summer, so we delayed our honeymoon.