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Document Number: 140
Classification: ORIGINAL: Newspaper
Location: USA, Utah, Salt Lake, Salt Lake City
Date Range: BTWN 1948 and 1948
Newspaper Article About JOHNSON, Anna
Document Entry Number: 1
Transcription:
To Realize Early Promise
By Gordon B. Hinckley
MISS ANNA JOHNSON is one of 373 missionaries leaving Salt Lake City this week. Her story is something of special interest, for this mission is more than the realization of a desire. It is the fulfillment of a promise made by a servant of the Lord when she was a sixteen year old girl. It is further remarkable by reason of the fact that she should have been dead years ago according to the best medical wisdom.
It is altogether fitting that Miss Johnson should have become a missionary because her family before her were powerful preachers of the gospel. It was her grandfather, Olaus Johnson, who first delivered the message of Mormonism to the Widtsoe family in Trondheim, Norway, whereby there came into the Church a widow and her two sons, all of whom have distinguished themselves in furthering the cause of truth.
THAT STORY IS pretty well known - how the mother sent the boy John's shoes to the cobbler for repairs, and how they were returned with a Mormon tract stuffed in each, tracts which were later followed with testimony. That story has been beautifully set forth in a classic written by the owner of those small shoes, now a member of the Council of the Twelve, Elder John A. Widtsoe.
The story of how the Johnsons came into the Church is equally interesting. Olaus, the grandfather of Anna Johnson, and the testimony bearer to Anna Widtsoe, heard the gospel on the island of Ytterean. At that same time, his tow sons were at sea in widely separated oceans. Strangely enough, each found a copy of the Book of Mormon on the ship on which he was sailing. Each read his book and was similarly touched. When they returned to Norway, they looked up the Mormon elders and applied for baptism without further teaching.
During the years that followed, the faith of this family. so strangely planted, grew and strengthened. But so bitter became the feeling toward them that the people of the island ordered them to leave and take with them every log and rafter of their home and buildings lest the land remain contaminated. Those materials carried to Trondheim, were used to build the first mission home in Scandinavia.
From such stock, vigilant in the defense of truth, came Anna Johnson, who has a story of her own, equally intriguing.
In 1933 she visited China. There she met with a strange traffic accident. The ricksha in which she was riding was run into by another from behind. Both her neck and back were broken.
She was taken to a Shanghai hospital where a wise doctor, knowing nothing of her background, asked. "Do you use liquor, tobacco, or tea?"' She replied in the negative. He was surprised. and said, "If you don't use those things, there is reason to believe that you will be all right."
But when she returned home, paralysis began to set in. Living in a hospital bed, she realized the inevitable result. There, under those circumstances, she wrote jingles. Since then more than five thousand of her verses have been published in 'Hopscotch Valley," the popular child's corner of The Deseret New. She has produced twenty books of published verse out of that effort begun in an hour of despair.
Friends heard of a famed nerve specialist who was to visit London while en route from India to South America. After hearing of her case, he agreed to examine her. Her faith buoyed by a blessing given under the hands of Elder Melvin J. Ballard, she set out for England.
During the hours of consultation with the surgeon he told her a strange story. While he was serving in the first World War his buddy had been killed at his side. There was no chaplain about, and it appeared necessary to bury the soldier without a funeral service, to the great distress of his friends. Then two of the men at the company indicated that they had been former Mormon missionaries. There on the battlefield they sang, prayed, and spoke words of faith. The doctor told Miss Johnson that thereafter he felt he owed a debt of gratitude to the Mormon people andit was that that prompted him to see what he could do for her.
However, after a careful examination he told her friends that the risk was too great, that if the slightest slip were made she would die instantly, and that they should try to keep her happy and perhaps she would live for about fifteen years.
But the transom of the room was open and she overheard the conversation. She confronted him with it, and told him that because of the blessing she had received in the authority of the Priesthood she had no fears and wanted him to take the chance. He refused to accept anything for that remarkable operation, and later reverently told her that the hand of God has surely been in it.
And so today the woman who once had a broken neck and back, is on her way to Hawaii to preach the gospel in the tradition of her grandfather and father before her. And in fulfillment of a promise made by a patriarch that she should go to the Islands of the sea and there serve a mission.
Associated Persons and Marriages:
JOHNSON, Anna (Id# 1237) Religion, HIGH
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