The Lord's love and concern for each individual soul are apparent in Doctrine and Covenants 18:15: "And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!"

Photo by Greg Hill

This marker by a bridge over the Sweetwater River in Wyoming honors the memory of young men who carried members of the Martin Handcart Company across the freezing waters late in 1856. Three rescuers died from their heroic efforts.

In his October 1974 general conference address, then-Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve illustrated this concept. He spoke of LDS immigrants in the late 1850s traveling to the land of Zion by handcart. "Some of the most touching and tragic moments in the history of the Church accompanied these handcart pioneers."

Elder Packer related how in one such handcart company, 6-year-old Arthur became separated from the group and was lost. He was the next to youngest of four children of Robert and Ann Parker, who realized he was missing after hurriedly making camp in a thunderstorm. They had thought he was playing along the way with the other children. Then someone remembered seeing the little boy sit down in the shade of some brush to rest.

"Now most of you have little children and you know how quickly a tired little 6-year-old could fall asleep on a sultry summer day and how soundly he could sleep, so that even the noise of the camp moving on might not awaken him. For two days, the men of the camp searched for Arthur to no avail, when finally, on July 2, the camp was ordered to move on. Robert Parker sent his family on but stayed behind to search one more time for his son. "As he was leaving camp, his wife pinned a bright shawl about his shoulders with words such as these: 'If you find him dead, wrap him in the shawl to bury him. If you find him alive, you could use this as a flag to signal us.'

"Out on the trail each night Ann Parker kept watch. At sundown on July 5, as they were watching, they saw a figure approaching from the east. Then, in the rays of the setting sun, she saw a glimmer of the bright red shawl. One of the diaries records: 'Ann Parker fell in a pitiful heap upon the sand, and that night, for the first time in six nights, she slept.'

"We do not know all of the details," Elder Packer continued. "A nameless woodsman — I've often wondered how unlikely it was that a woodsman should be there — found the little boy and described him as being sick with illness and with terror, and he cared for him until his father found him.

"So here a story, commonplace in its day, ends — except for a question. How would you, in Ann Parker's place, feel toward the nameless woodsman had he saved your little son? Would there be any end to your gratitude?

"To sense this is to feel something of the gratitude our father must feel toward any of us who saves one of His children. Such gratitude is a prize dearly to be won, for the Lord has said, 'If it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!' (Doctrine and Covenants 18:15.)

"Even so, I might add, if that soul should be our own."