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When I think of a successful person, the first person I think of is the late Charlie Kirk. I was stunned when I heard about his assassination. It happened during one of his events at Utah Valley University on September 10 of this year.
Charlie Kirk was a month away from his thirty second birthday when he was gunned down. Although he was very young he accomplished more in his short life than many of us, including me, will ever achieve.
Some of Charlie’s greatest accomplishments:
Started a non-profit organization named Turning Point USA in 2012 when he was only 18 years old
Was the author of a book “The College Scam”
Was the host of his own radio show
Was the speaker at the Republican National Convention 2020 and 2024
Was a proud follower of Jesus and talked with many young people regarding faith and family
Met with many world leaders
Those are just a few of the reasons I think that Charlie Kirk was an extremely successful person. It was Charlie’s faith that I most admired. His commitment to his faith, family and our country were a joy to hear. He traveled around the USA promoting freedom of speech, Christian values, and conservative values. He chose to debate and listen to other points of view. I have watched many of his videos of him challenging college students. He was always kind and showed so much common sense, which is so rare today.
I think Charlie was so successful in his life due mainly to his unfaltering faith in Christ. He was also very successful in his relationships. He had a beautiful, loving wife and two children.
I saw people mourning this young man all over the USA and countries overseas. You had to know this was a very special man who had touched millions of lives including mine even though I never met him. Charlie has been called to heaven, but now it’s up to us to carry on his faith and values.
Daily writing prompt
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?
First and most important, I should be paying a lot more attention to my relationship with God. I am working on that but it’s so hard. It would be easier if I had a good church I belonged to. I am not criticizing any church, but I am not comfortable in many new churches. I tried one with a friend but I didn’t find peace there. The music was like going to a concert. I prefer the old hymns, pianos and organ music. And many churches are going that way with the modern Christian music. I simply don’t find peace or Christ in that music. I am glad that so many are going to these newer churches but it’s not for me.
The second area I need to be paying more attention to is my health. This includes eating better and exercising more. I love sweets and don’t care much for vegetables. I do eat a healthy amount of fruit. Being a single person, it’s hard to cook proper meals for just one person. I should also be spending more time either going to the gym or walking. Alternatively, I could follow a good exercise program at home.
Another area that needs attention in my life would be my family and friends. Lately I seem to be spending the majority of my time sitting at my computer. But writing is also a part of my life. To become a decent writer requires writing every day. It takes dedication to research and work on my writing projects.
If only I were a more organized person. I would have the ability to manage to pay more attention to my faith, health and writing.
Daily writing prompt
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
Smilie027 Positive thinking means having a positive approach towards anything and everything.
The best piece of advice I ever received came from my sister. She suggested that maybe I should stop being so negative about everything. And I was seeing the bad in most everything. I don’t really remember why that was. But for some reason, I wasn’t seeing and appreciating the things I did have.
Having a positive attitude is an upbeat way of looking at life in general. It helps you look for solutions and answers to problems. A positive attitude is believing in your own value as a person. If you have a positive attitude, you see failure as lessons for doing better in the future. You become better equipped to adjust to new or difficult situations.
There was a time when I was very good friends with a woman I worked with. We did a lot of things together. But there came a time when we went our separate ways. Later, I started to notice how she had such a negative attitude towards our co-workers. Actually, that’s what caused the problem between the two of us. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to her attitude when we were friends. But later, I saw how she treated other employees and I realized how her attitude had rubbed off on me. I began to change my own attitude at work and learned that friendships can affect our attitudes and beliefs. It is important who we choose as our closest friends.
After my sister gave me that advice, I did try harder to be less negative. I looked at things a little differently. And eventually, I became more positive about a lot of things. I also started to notice other people who had a negative attitude. People didn’t care much to be around them. I noticed the same attitude in my son recently. I passed on my sister’s advice and other words of great wisdom.
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Dorothy Day was born as one of five children to John and Grace Day in Brooklyn, New York on November 8,1897. Her father was a sports writer and later became a sports editor. A few years after Dorothy’s birth he moved the family to San Francisco, California to take a better job. The Days family lived in California until the Great Earthquake in 1906 which destroyed her father’s place of employment. Before they left California Dorothy and her mother tried to help those who had been left homeless from the earthquake. This probably influenced Dorothy in such a way that years later it became her life’s work to help others in need.
The Day family then moved to Chicago, Illinois and lived in one of the poorer sections of Chicago until her Father found work that allowed him to move his family to a better neighborhood. Dorothy never seemed to forget what it was like to be poor and perhaps that is what led her to make the choice of helping the poor and less fortunate.
College Years
While still living in Chicago Dorothy won a scholarship which allowed her to go to The University of Illinois and she attended there for two years from 1914 until 1916. Dorothy loved reading and learning and she especially enjoyed reading the works of Dickens and Poe as well as others. It was at the university that her journalistic career began when she went to work for a small local paper. The friends she chose while in college were generally socialists who influenced her to join the Socialist Party. With her friends she became involved with radical causes concerning poor working people.
Life as aNew York Reporter
Two years later, she gave up her studies at the university and moved to New York. She was just eighteen years old at the time. Here she found her first real job as a reporter working for the New York Call where she worked for a few months before leaving The Call to work for The Masses. As a reporter she covered labor meetings, protests and riots as well as other social causes. Here in New York, she made friends with other journalists, liberals, socialists, labor collaborators and communist that she met through her work. During this time, Dorothy was like most young women, enjoying life, her first relationships with men and love. She also became pregnant during this time period and she chose to have an abortion rather than raise the child
Occoquan Prison:The Night of Terror
While working as a reporter for The Masses, Dorothy traveled to Washington, DC to join with a women’s suffrage protest organized by Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and The National Women’s Party. As a result, Dorothy and several of the other women were arrested and spent several weeks in jail. Dorothy asked for and was given a Bible which she took much comfort from. After being arrested and sentenced to thirty days in jail, Dorothy and the other women went on a hunger strike which drew the attention of President Woodrow Wilson who ordered the women to be released from jail. Later these women dubbed their time in the Occoquan Prison as “The Night of Terror”.
Love and Heartbreak
n 1918, Dorothy thought it was time to look for a possible new career and tried nursing by enrolling at Kings County Hospital in New York. It was while she was in nurse’s training that she met and fell in love with a fellow newspaper associate, Lionel Moise. She became pregnant with his baby which he insisted that she abort, so in an attempt to keep the man she thought she loved she had the abortion. She was only 21 at the time. Dorothy often stated how deeply she regretted making that decision because within a short period of time Lionel had walked out and left her anyway.
After Lionel walked out Dorothy was heartbroken and she married Berkely Tobey on the rebound. The two of them traveled for some time together but the marriage was a brief one and ended in divorce shortly afterwards. After divorcing Berkely Tobey, Dorothy entered into a relationship with Forster Batterham for several years and became pregnant for the second time. To Dorothy, this was a miracle because she had believed that she could not have children after having the abortion. She gave birth to a daughter she named Tamar Theresa on March 4,1926. This was the beginning of the end of her relationship with Forster who had not wanted either marriage or children and soon after the two went their separate ways.
The Beginning of a Lifetime of Serving God
Between 1932 and 1933, Dorothy met Peter Maurin an illegal immigrant who was also a scholar with leanings toward the catholic faith. On May 1,1933 the two of them published their first issue of The Catholic Worker and began focusing on their mission of promoting Biblical teachings, morals, mercy and justice, which was also committed to forming a nonviolence peaceful society. Together these two would work for social change, better working conditions for workers and help and comfort for the poor.
Achievements of Dorothy and Peter
Started the newspaper (The Catholic Worker
Opened the first House of Hospitality in 1933
Started farming communes for people in need who could live on the commune and help to raise food and animals to meet their needs
Peter Maurin, Dorothy’s close friend and co-founder of the Catholic Worker’s Movement
Books Written by Dorothy Day
The Eleventh Virgin
From Union Square to Rome
House of Hospitality
On Pilgrimage
The Long Loneliness
Selected Writings
Loaves and Fishes
The Reckless Way of Love (notes on following Jesus)
The Duty of Delight
All the way to Heaven
Peter Maurin Apostle to the World
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker
Meditations
In My Own Words
This is a short list of the books that Dorothy Day wrote. She also wrote over three hundred articles for various newspapers that she worked for over her lifetime. Many of her books are books of faith and stories of how she spent her lifetime and her faith in service to others.
Dorothy Day Honors and Achievements
Dorothy achieved so much that it is hard to comprehend everything this woman did but this is a short list of some of the most memorable events of her life.
Dorothy had the honor of meeting Mother Teresa in 1970. It’s believed that Mother Theresa gave Dorothy one of her crosses
Received Communion with the Pope 1967
Received birthday wishes from the Pope on her 80th birthday in 1977
University of Notre Dame honored her with the Laetare Medal which is given for outstanding service to the Catholic church and society
Dorothy had a long and deep impact on the Catholic church
This is only a few of the achievements and honors that Dorothy received during her lifetime.
In Conclusion
Dorothy Day was a determined and courageous woman who found her faith and her strength in the Catholic Church. Upon finding her faith, she worked hard and tirelessly for the poor. She gave more of herself than most of us are capable of. She was jailed several times in her efforts to help women fight for their rights in addition to other causes that she felt strongly about. She spent most of her adult life serving her God, her church and her fellow human beings. Let us all strive a bit harder to be more like Dorothy Day and make the world a better place. A world more like Dorothy Day’s vision of caring and loving our fellow human beings.
Would you be willing to leave your home country, your family, friends and everything you are familiar with to follow your faith? Would you sell everything you own to take a ship to a new country without knowing what might lie ahead of you? Relying only on faith, could you walk thirteen hundred miles in extreme heat, rain and freezing snow while pushing and pulling a heavy cart up steep mountains and across raging, freezing rivers? As you watched your fellow brothers and sisters fall sick and die along the way, do you think your faith might falter along the way?
This is exactly what an estimated fifteen hundred Mormon saints did in the year 1856. In 1856 the Mormons had sent missionaries to several European countries and converted thousands to the Mormon faith. Brigham Young, a dynamic Mormon church leader encouraged these converts to immigrate to the United States to an area in the Salt Lake City Territory. Here they were promised life would be better than Europe.
The problem was that many of the new converts were also too poor to meet the expenses necessary to pay for the entire journey. Expenses included the cost of passage on a ship to America, then taking the railroad to Iowa, then buying a covered wagon with a good team of oxen, as well as provisions along the way. Attempting to cut expenses to make it more affordable, Brigham Young and the Mormon Church had come up with the handcart companies.
This would allow the converts to make it to Iowa where they would be outfitted with a handcart which they would each be allowed to take seventeen pounds of bedding, clothing and a few personal items. Each company would have close to five hundred members and experienced leaders would lead each company west to Salt Lake City. Several covered wagons and teams of oxen would carry provisions and would carry those who became sick or were too old or injured.
Handcart Regulations
One family for each cart
Up to five people were assigned to a cart
Each person was allowed a total of seventeen pounds
Tents which held twenty people and provisions were carried on wagons with teams of oxen
The Test Of Faith Begins
Several handcart companies with hundreds of converts left Europe and made it to Iowa early enough that even with the hardships of the trail, the first companies made it safely to their new home in the Salt Lake Valley. However, two of the later companies were not as fortunate.
The Willie Company left Liverpool, England in mid May and would not reach the New York Harbor until Mid June. As they approached the New York Harbor there was much rejoicing, excitement and giving of thanks for a safe journey. During the trip, there had been a few deaths, births and a wedding or two. In general though, the saints were in good spirits and they spent a lot of their time on board in worship meetings and prayer.
After landing in New York they were allowed a few days of rest before they would proceed by train through the state of New York to Lake Erie. A steamboat would carry the converts across the lake, where they would board trains to take them as far as Iowa City, Iowa.
The Willie Company left Iowa City in Mid July and the Martin Company left almost two weeks later close to the end of July. It would be a four month trip and both companies were getting a late start. By the time they made it to Wyoming, it was possible they could encounter early winter weather.
The Journey Becomes A Disaster
In Iowa City, the immigrants were awaken by the sound of the bugle calling them to worship services after which time the handcarts lined up and they started one of the longest walks in history. They left Iowa City in high spirits, singing songs of praise and full of hope for their new destiny, having no real idea of what horrors and trials might lay ahead of them.
In July, they suffered through the intense heat of the summer each day and managed to walk between twelve and twenty miles a day depending on the trail conditions. They stopped only for brief periods for lunch and camped each evening along a creek or river so there was water for the saints as well as the livestock. As the days wore on, the elderly began to take sick and die along the way. Few of the elderly would live to see their new homeland. They would be buried along the trail.
By early August, they had reached the Missouri River and by mid to late August they had reached Florence, Nebraska. Here, each company held meetings to discuss whether they should spend the winter in Florence or continue onward to the Salt Lake Valley. Although some, including one of the more experienced leaders Levi Savage, voiced the opinion of staying due to the coming onset of winter, pointing out the lack of warm clothing, pregnant women, children and the elderly. However, the saints were anxious to reach their destination and the final decision was made to try to reach Salt Lake City before winter.
Throughout September things went well but in October the weather began to change rapidly and became much colder. Provisions began scare and were rationed. The saints began to lose weight and strength needed to pull their carts. More and more of the elderly and the children became sick and deaths increased almost on a daily basis.
The journey had become a nightmare but through all the terrible hardships the saints held fast to their amazing faith in God that he would deliver them safely to their new homeland.
Both the Willie and the Martin companies got caught in October with an early snowstorm. Both companies ran low on supplies and had to ration supplies causing many to die of starvation. They crossed rivers in the freezing cold water and many suffered from frostbite and had limbs amputated. Some simply could not go any further and froze to death.
Rescue of the Mormon Handcarts
The Rescue
At the end of their endurance, rescue teams sent out from the church began to reach both companies but not before both companies had terrible losses. Even with the rescuers arrival, supplies were still limited and the freeing conditions continued to hamper their progress.
Through all the hardships and sorrows one thing endured and that was their faith in God. As one gentleman who survived said: The journey was one of the hardest that anyone would ever experience. However, in spite of everything, the hardships, death and sorrows along the way, the journey had made them one with God because at the end they had nothing else.
True Sisters is a novel written by Sandra Dallas. While this story is not an actual true story and the characters are not based on real people, it is a story of an event in American history. It is based on journals, accounts and stories from the people who survived the hardships of the 1,300 mile journey across the United States from Iowa to Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the story of strong courageous women. This novel is about the struggle for survival against enormous hardships. At the same time it is also the story of strong, courageous women from very different backgrounds who learn to love each other and form bonds as strong as any blood sisters, thus making them True Sisters.
The Immigrants
Ella Buck is a young married woman, who along with her husband Andrew, and her sister Nannie have come from Edinburgh, Scotland as new Mormon converts. They made the decision to seek a better life and follow their faith all the way to Salt Lake City, Iowa. Brigham Young has declared that the Utah territory will be the Mormons new Zion. They will sail from Europe, then go by train to Iowa where they are to meet up with other new Mormon converts.Ella is pregnant with the couple’s first child and Nannie is hoping to find a husband when they arrive in Salt Lake City. All three are full of hope and confident of a bright, happy and prosperous future when they reach Salt Lake City. But they have no idea what hardships they will face along the way west.
Statue Honoring The Thousands Who Made The Journey Across America
Annie and John Sully
Annie Sully had been given little choice about making the trip to America and the journey west. She had not converted to Mormonism and did not want to give up her own faith but her husband John had converted and he had made the decision to leave London and join the other converts in Iowa. Annie had been quite content with her life in London. Her father had left her a successful gentlemen’s clothing shop which Annie was happy to continue the business with her husband. Annie also had three small children and is pregnant with a fourth child. She is quite concerned with giving birth in a strange country while pushing a handcart across the country for 1,300 miles. Nevertheless, John has sold their business and even given most of their money to the elders of the church so that others can afford to make the trip also. Annie has made the choice to follow John against her better judgment, but she will face many trials, heartache and hardships along the way. But she will also find other women who will love her, and care for her and her family even though she holds steadily to her own faith.
Louisa and Thales Tanner
Louisa Tanner is a newly married young woman whose husband is Thales Tanner, one of the missionary leaders. He is in charge of one hundred of the new converts who will be heading west. Louisa feels she is very lucky to have such an important man as her husband. Along with Louisa, her sister Huldah and her elderly parents will be making the journey west. Not all of them would survive the grueling journey.
Jessie Cooper
Jessie Cooper and Louisa Tanner have always been good friends. Before Louisa married Thales Tanner, he had previously courted Jessie. The two friends did not let this come between them, because truthfully Jessie was happy that Louisa had married Thales. She felt that Louisa was a much better match for Thales. Jessie was sure that when she arrived in Salt Lake City that she would find a husband of her own. Jessie and her brothers Ephraim and Sutter had made the decision to leave their tenant farm in the hopes of finding good fertile land in the Salt Lake Valley. So they sold their small farm and belongings and paid for their passage to America. They met the handcart train in Iowa. Jessie and her brothers were optimist and excited about their future never guessing what hardships lay in store for them.
The Journey Begins
Near the end of July 1856, the Martin Company of converted Mormons slowly started on the long journey. Everyone was in high spirits and excited to be on their way. Families would walk and push and pull their handcarts which held their meager possessions. Each person was allowed seventeen pounds to be put on their carts but along the way much of their worldly goods would end up being left behind. The carts were made of green lumber and poorly made. There were no oxen or horses to pull the carts, they would be pulled by human power only.This is the story of these four brave, courageous women as they faced unbelievable dangers, heartbreak, death of loved ones and hardships on their journey. These women would have to learn to help, love and lean on each other. There would of course, be many other members of the Martin Company they would meet and help along the way but these four would become Truly Sisters for the rest of their lives.
Reasons I Recommend Reading True Sisters
I truly enjoyed reading True Sisters. I had never even heard of this part of our American history until I read this book. If you enjoy reading about history, this is a great novel
The book is well written and the characters well developed
It is an emotional story that will tug at your heart. It did mine
It is the type of book that will keep you interested from start to finish
History Lovers Corner 