(Excerpts from “William Odell Tolman: Patriarch, Genealogist, Teacher,” compiled by Loraine Tolman Pace, First Edition, 2009, pages 19-24).
I would like to record here a little detail about my call to go on a mission. It was unusual for a boy in our little ward to go on a mission. It was a farming community. There were about 150 total members in the ward. I guess we hadn’t had a missionary out of our ward for maybe fifteen years. It wasn’t like today where every young man goes on a mission.
I don’t know why I was called from among the other young men in the ward, but I think I know why. When I was ten years old, I developed a problem. My mother and father had always taught me to pray. We had family prayer. Then I always had secret prayer. If I got in bed without praying, I just couldn’t go to sleep, so I would have to crawl out and say my prayers so I could go to sleep. My mother had impressed that so much on my mind that this was one of the most important things I could do in my life–to pray every night. Because I felt there was no other way to solve my problem but to take it to my Father in Heaven, I did. At the age of ten I confessed my mistakes and told my Father in Heaven about my problem. Back in those days we plowed the fields with horse-drawn plows. Before I was very old I was driving a span of four horses on a plow going around and around the field. Many times I knelt in the plowed field and prayed with tears running down my face that my Father in Heaven would help me. I think that was the reason I was called when I was eighteen years old to go on a mission.
While working at the Artesian swimming resort, I received a tempting offer, if I refused to go on a mission. The fellow who owned the swimming resort also owned about fifteen small ranches around the resort that he rented to farmers.
He was a wealthy sheep farmer from Wyoming or Montana. About once a month he would come to this resort called “Artesian.” He had a big Cadillac and then he would get me to chauffeur him around to his tenant farmers. That was great. He took quite a liking to me and later that summer when I announced to him that I was going on a mission, or at least I had been interviewed to go on a mission, he said: “Tell me about it.” I told him and he said: “Who is going to pay for your mission?” I told him it is customary for the parents to do it, so I suppose my parents will pay for my expenses in the mission field. Back in those days we didn’t have support from an elders quorum or other priesthood quorums if you needed it. My parents were very poor. It was very disturbing to him because he was not a member of the church. He said, “Bill, if you will give up this silly idea of wasting two years of your life and causing your parents to sacrifice beyond their ability, I will send you to college for four years, pay all your expenses, and it will cost you not one penny. You continue to work for me and next summer I will increase your salary to $300.00 a month plus board and room. I would like you to stay with me.” This was a great temptation to me. It was a difficult decision for a poor farm lad; but I turned down his proposition and chose to go on the mission. This was one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life.
I was interviewed, when I was seventeen years old, by Bishop Pickett about going into the mission field, and then he talked to my parents. I was thrilled with this possibility, but my parents were very poor, and it seemed quite unlikely that I would ever have the opportunity. Dad and mother said: “Bishop, you know we can’t send Willie on a mission. We don’t have the money.”
Bishop Pickett asked mother and father if they would give him a yes or no answer because he wanted me to be interviewed by a general authority if I was to go on a mission. The bishop kept talking to my parents and during the spring of 1928 at stake conference Mother, in all the faith that she was blessed with, said to my father, “If the Lord wants him to go on a mission, surely he will provide the means for us to send him.” My mother believed this, and father said, “All right, we will send him.” And so I was interviewed to go into the mission field while I was still seventeen years old. I regret that I cannot recall which general authority came to conference and interviewed me. I guess I was so scared that I just forgot it. I was interviewed that day, which was customary. The missionaries were always interviewed by a general authority, and we always had a general authority conference. That was back in the days when there were just a few stakes in the church and not too many wards. The bishop told the general authority that my parents had requested that I not receive my call until after I turned eighteen.
I finished working at the swimming resort and they usually closed it down at the beginning of school. After that I went to Burley to work for my Uncle Burt Goodfellow picking potatoes. I didn’t go to school because I had graduated from high school. Few people went on to college from our little community.
30 Sep 1928: The president of the Cassia Stake, William T. Jack, conferred upon me the Melchizedek priesthood and ordained me an elder at stake priesthood meeting in the Oakley High School.
As I was out in the field on this particular day picking spuds, here came the bishop through the plowed field in his car with my mother. They had this long envelope. Mother had been kind enough not to open the letter. She handed it to me and I opened the letter and to my delight and surprise, I was called to go to the British Isles as a missionary. The letter was signed by President Heber J. Grant and also by his counselors, Anthony W. Ivins and Charles W. Nibley. I was called to be in the mission home November 1, 1928.
The letter said I needed to bring $400.00 and then it told why. I would need to buy a suit of clothes and I had to buy a steamer trunk to pack all my things in it to go across the ocean in an ocean liner. Of course, when I read the letter to mother and the bishop, they were shocked. My dad had been hoping and praying that I would be called to the western states, so I could walk from Oakley, Idaho to Denver and it wouldn’t cost me anything. I had to have $100.00 in the mission field when I got there. That was part of the $400.00 for my first two months in the mission field. It cost me $50.00 a month for the twenty-four months I was there.
Bishop Pickett knew how I loved to dance and he said: “Now, Willie, we will have a missionary farewell, and we would like your two buddies Dean and Trafford to talk at the farewell. But how would you like in addition to this to have a farewell dance?” I was delighted because dancing was just like food to me. This would give me one chance to have one last fling with the girls before I went into the mission field. He said: “We won’t charge anything for admission, but we will let the people contribute what they want. We will get the word around and invite all the people in the valley. There were six small wards in the valley at that time including the Basin Ward. In those days it was customary for your parents and grandparents to attend the dance. Everyone turned out. All did not dance but they sat and visited. The bishop said we would have a live orchestra. The cultural hall, as we call it today, was not attached to the chapel as it is today. It was about a half a mile away from the chapel. That is where we held our ward dances.
That night I arrived at the dance all shined up for the girls, and I had a glorious time. When the dance was over, the bishop took me into the office, and we counted out the money. Remember, the letter said I had to have $400.00. My dad didn’t have any idea where he could even get a dollar. When the dance was over, Bishop Pickett and I sat in his office in the dance hall and counted the money. There was $402.00 that had been contributed by the people of those six wards. So that was a miracle. My mother knew that miracles would happen like that during the two years I was gone, and they did.
2 Nov 1928: The Oakley Herald reported: “A large crowd attended the farewell dance given Friday night at Marion for William Tolman who will leave for an LDS mission in England soon. The same day: Mrs. J A. Tolman gave a party for her grandson William Tolman who left for Salt Lake City Saturday. Later he will go to England to fill a mission.”
I got the things I had to have and when I came through Bountiful on my way to the mission home which was in Salt Lake City, of course, Mother had notified relatives there and on Monday night Uncle Eph, Ray’s grandfather, had arranged for a party at his place on 1300 East with all the cousins. There was a lot of them who turned out. Ray’s father was there, and they just showed me a glorious time. I didn’t know them. I had not met them before because we had not visited back and forth. A few had visited Oakley and one time I came to Bountiful when I was twelve years old or less. While they were having fun and doing a little dancing and exchanging stories, Uncle Eph, Ray’s grandfather, took me in the bedroom and he said: “Bill, there is something I want to tell you. I am impressed and I must tell you. I have never had the chance of going to school. I have never received an education. My education has been from reading the Book of Mormon. Actually I learned to read from reading the Book of Mormon. I want to give you a promise because when you get over in old England you will get discouraged as you knock on doors and they slam doors in your face and you will get homesick and wonder why you are there.” (It was not unusual for a missionary to spend two years in the British Isles and return without baptizing anyone.) “The promise I want to give you is when those moments come and you wonder why you are in the mission field wasting this money that is being sent to you,” (Actually after I got to the mission field twenty-four miracles happened=one every month to raise the fifty dollars to send to me and my mother knew it would come. She knew. In fact, the day before it was ready to send she got on her knees and she said, “Now Father, tomorrow I have to send $50.00 to my son.” and the next day my uncle [Joseph Osborne Tolman] from Star Valley came to our home in the Oakley valley and he said: ‘Hattie, the spirit of the Lord has whispered to me that you need $50.00 and he handed my mother $50.00.’ And that kind of miracle was repeated during my mission.) “if you will open the Book of Mormon any place that it falls open, just let it fall open, and you start reading and you will find as you read that your discouragement and your homesickness and your wondering will all leave you and you will be ready to go out and knock on doors again.” Because of that counsel of Uncle Eph, I received my testimony on the way to the mission field.
From the history of my brother, Alvin, is recorded one of the miracles of my mission. “Another faith promoting experience that has been a real testimony to me was when my brother Bill was called on a mission. Mother and Dad never had very much, and it was a struggle each month for the money to keep him there. This one particular instance, early in the spring, they did not have the money to send and knew not where it would come from. There were three days left, and remember the prayers of my mother and father. Then a call came from a potato man in Burley, not a member of the church, who wanted dad and his family to take care of fifty acres of potatoes. He asked if we needed an advance payment. This took care of the month’s money needed for our missionary, as well as the finances for the rest of his mission. The Lord always provided if we were faithful.”
I arrived at the Salt Lake mission home, located north of the Beehive House on State Street, during the last part of October and, after one week of training and instruction, left for the British Mission. This was an exciting but a frightening experience for a boy eighteen years of age who had seldom been away from home and only once out of the State of Idaho.
I was endowed in the Salt Lake Temple, 1 Nov 1928, while I was at the mission home in Salt Lake City. I was also taken on a tour of the Salt Lake Temple at that time and received my patriarchal blessing from Hyrum G. Smith, 6 Nov 1928.
Visit FamilySearch to learn more about William Odell Tolman and other ancestors. Also visit the Thomas Tolman Family Organization to find out how you can get more involved in family history.