ST. GEORGE, UTAH
Comparing the red rock terrain of southern Utah with Australia's northern territory — and the founders of Utah's Dixie with Australia's hardy Aborigines — Elder Bruce C. Hafen drew lessons about human determination and interdependence.
Elder Hafen, emeritus General Authority and the president of the St. George Utah Temple, was the luncheon speaker May 27 at the 46th annual conference of the Utah History Association meeting at the Dixie Center in St. George.
A descendant himself of St. George settlers, Elder Hafen said, "This once-parched corner of the earth is soaked with rich Church history."
He noted that "the Dixie founders faced unusually daunting tasks, yet they produced unusually rich fruit."
In 1861, he said, Brigham Young announced in the Salt Lake Tabernacle the names of 300 men and their families whom he called to settle St. George.
Though seasoned settlers, "they were unprepared for the starkness of what waited for them 300 miles to the south," he said. "'Soil seems like too generous a word for Dixie's red dirt. The summers could grow only half as much grain per capita as elsewhere in Utah on farms half as big and 10 times harder to water."
In the early 1860s, President Young sent Elder Hafen's own ancestors south with other settlers from Santa Clara after they had just arrived from Switzerland, "perhaps the greenest, best-watered, tidiest country in all the world."
Speaking in a light vein, Elder Hafen said he imagines making a movie about his great-grandfather's life story. "I plan to show these Swiss settlers standing on a rich, green hill near Zurich with Heidi and her goats gazing contentedly at the background. The Swiss emigrants will begin singing, 'O Babylon, O Babylon, we bid thee farewell.' And I'll have them keep singing in the same pose as the background abruptly changes to show skinny mesquite bushes clinging to the red, alkaline dirt with scary lizards and a cow skull on the ground. Their song will continue: 'We're going to the mountains of Ephraim to dwell.' "
Elder Hafen then quoted these words of Brigham Young: "It is the short-sightedness of men which causes their disappointment when they arrive here. They expect to find Zion here in its glory, whereas their own doctrines should teach them that they're coming here to make Zion. The people can make Zion. They can make a heaven within themselves."
Elder Hafen commented, "Making Zion is an internal matter of the heart."
He told of being in Australia where the Aborigines live off the land in traditional, deeply religious ways, having lived according to an ancient pattern, the oldest continuously surviving culture on earth.
"I find it striking that the human culture with the greatest longevity would be located in one of this planet's most hostile environments," he said. "Something about that connection echoes the hardiness of Dixie's people."
He said, "The comparison between southern Utah and Australia's northern territory became complete for me the day we saw Ayers Rock, known to the Aborigines as Uluru." It is a huge, red rock a thousand feet high with a circumference of five miles.
"In a comparison of eerie closeness, the red color and sandy texture of Uluru look exactly as if someone had carved it from the familiar cliffs above St. George or Ivins," he said.
Before Elder Hafen left Australia, an intense, days-long cloudburst changed the red sandstone color of Uluru to purple. A friend gave him a framed photograph of the rock, showing the water gushing down the now-purple rocks and crevices and pooling in the foreground. The friend had inscribed on the frame these words from scripture: "And in the barren deserts there shall come forth pools of living water; and the parched ground shall no longer be a thirsty land" (Doctrine and Covenants 133:29).
The rain upon Uluru, Elder Hafen said, prompts a memory of another founding story of Dixie, Lorenzo Snow and the windows of heaven.
"In 1899, President Snow came to St. George out of sheer compassion over the awful drought that was choking the parched corner. He was also weighed down by a much larger problem: The Church's very survival was threatened by financial debt."
Speaking in the St. George Tabernacle, he felt prompted to promise the people that if they paid tithing, the windows of heaven would open and they would receive rain. At the same time, if the Church obeyed his counsel, "the shackles of indebtedness will be removed from the Church."
Eventually, the rain did come and the Church was relieved of debt.
"I marvel at the change in human character symbolized by red rocks that become purple," Elder Hafen said.
