Skip to main content

February 20

1834 – The Kirtland High Council met to consider whether someone who did not keep the Word of Wisdom could be allowed to hold office in the Church.  After the discussion, the decision made was that a person, having been properly taught the Word of Wisdom and then disregarding it, could not hold a position in the Church.

1840 – The Prophet Joseph Smith leaves Washington, D.C. to return to Nauvoo, Illinois.  He had left Nauvoo for Washington, D.C. on October 29, 1839, to petition United States president Martin Van Buren and the U.S. Congress to redress the Saints for their losses from being driven from Missouri.

1843 – While holding mayor’s court, the Prophet Joseph saw two boys fighting through the window.  He left the court and ran over to stop them from fighting.  He gave them “proper instruction’ and then chastised the bystanders for not interfering and stopping the fight, that they were “to quell all disturbances in the street at the first onset.’  He returned to the courtroom and “told them that nobody was allowed to fight in Nauvoo but myself’ (History of the Church, 5:282-283).

1844 – The Prophet Joseph met in council with the Twelve Apostles and others on various topics.  The Prophet Joseph writes, “I instructed the Twelve Apostles to send out a delegation and investigate the locations of California and Oregon, and hunt out a good location, where we can remove to after the temple is completed, and where we can build a city in a day, and have a government of our own, get up into the mountains, where the devil cannot dig us out, and live in a healthful climate, where we can live as old an we have a mind to’ (History of the Church, 6:222).  An anti-Mormon group met in Carthage, Illinois and set the date of the second Saturday in March for a “wolf-hunt,’ it also being the day for fasting and prayer for the “destruction’ of Joseph Smith.

1907 – After a five year battle, the U.S. Senate votes to allow Elder Reed Smoot, a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles and elected Senator from Utah, to retain his seat in the Senate.  The fight to allow him to sit as a Senator had resulted from easily disproved accusations of practicing plural marriage.

1937 – Elder Wilford C. Wood purchased the first of ten lots comprising the original Temple site in Nauvoo, Illinois, for the Church.

1977 – The first stake in Belgium is organized in Brussels.

1999 – The First Presidency announces that a temple would be built in Palmyra, New York, near where the Prophet Joseph Smith received his First Vision and obtained the gold plates that he would translate as The Book of Mormon.

2017 – A meeting was held in Mexico City between the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Tlalnepantla, His Eminence Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, and President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve.

2021 – A “Friend to Friend’ broadcast was the first Face to Face event for children It was also the Church’s first prerecorded broadcast originating in three languages designed for children and hosted by children. President Russell M. Nelson, Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Primary general presidency participated..



No Comments yet!

Your Email address will not be published.