HOLLADAY, Utah — It was on May 8, 1949, that a 28-year-old James E. Faust first stood before the congregation of the newly created Cottonwood 2nd Ward as its first bishop. Exactly 50 years later — on May 8 of this year — President Faust returned as the featured speaker at the ward's jubilee celebration, along with the 11 other bishops who have succeeded him in that position.
Now second counselor in the First Presidency, President Faust was bishop from 1949 to 1955, after which he went on to be president of the South Cottonwood Stake in this east central part of the Salt Lake Valley, one of the original units to be created outside Salt Lake City in 1849. (President Faust spoke earlier this year at the sesquicentennial observance of the creation of that stake; please see Feb. 20 Church News.)
Speaking to about 600 people who had come for the jubilee meeting that had been preceded by an open house, President Faust was tenderly reminiscent, even as he warned about the need for Church members in general to be faithful in keeping the commandments of God.
"How wonderful it is to see each one of you here," he told the assemblage. "Our lives have been intertwined...."
He spoke of the home he and his wife, Ruth, built on property nearby "under the shadows of Mt. Olympus," a prominent peak in the Wasatch Range east of the neighborhood. He said the window of the home was not big enough to view the mountain, "so there was nothing to do but clear out some bricks and add a bigger window so we could see Mt. Olympus."
He recalled evenings as a boy playing "Run Sheep Run" and "Kick the Can" with other children on the property where the ward meetinghouse now sits.
"Well, so very much has happened," he said. "That which can't be captured in words, really, is the feeling which was here. It was a feeling of unity. It was a feeling of love."
That feeling was a heritage that came from the pioneer founders of the Cottonwood neighborhood, Pres. Faust said. He asked Newell B. Stevenson, the man who succeeded him as bishop in 1955, to tell of Edward Stevenson, the "pioneer of Cottonwood" who came to the area with Elder Parley P. Pratt in September 1847.
Bishop Stevenson said his great-grandfather, Edward, was a member of the Seventy who crossed the plains 37 times on assignment to help the outlying members of the Church who had not yet come to the valley. Despite the rodents, famine and other hardships, Elder Stevenson wrote in his journal he had never known such comfort as he had known in the valley.
President Faust invited A. Thomas Nelson, who served as bishop from 1964 to 1968 to tell of the Bagleys, another pioneer family in Cottonwood. Bishop Nelson said his grandmother, Amanda Bagley, as stake Relief Society president and with approval from President Heber J. Grant, founded Cottonwood Maternity Home out of concern for the welfare of mothers and their newborn children who were in grave jeopardy because they had to give birth at home. The maternity hospital was the forerunner of Cottonwood Hospital, a substantial health care facility today which continued under Church ownership for many years.
"Well, we've talked about the past; what about the future?" President Faust asked. "We have great challenges ahead of us. We have great opportunities as well. But unless this people (and I'm speaking collectively, now, of the approximately 28,000 units in the Church) grow in faith and devotion and commitment, we'll be swallowed up by the evils of the world, and our children will be devoured by the influence of Satan."
He said he prays that Latter-day Saints, as they look backward, will also look forward and refocus their faith and commitment in keeping the commandments, particularly paying tithes and offerings.
President Faust said he hopes and prays that Church members will be a temple-going and covenant-keeping people "who put their responsibilities in the family — and when I speak of the family I speak of extended family as well — ahead of other considerations."
He said he has borne his testimony at the pulpit for 50 years since becoming bishop "and I have the obligation to do so again,... to bear witness of the divinity of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is just unbelievable the outpouring of the blessings of God upon this Church and this people."
President Faust testified of the influence of Christ at the head of the Church and that He "is close to His prophet. I sit by his side almost daily hour after hour and see the manifestation of the guiding hand of the Savior in the affairs of His Church."
